Evading Electoral Accountability: How Elites Maintain Voter Support in Contexts of Corruption
| dc.contributor.advisor | Schwindt-Bayer, Leslie A. | en_US |
| dc.creator | Elia, Emily | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-05-21T21:03:51Z | en_US |
| dc.date.available | 2024-05-21T21:03:51Z | en_US |
| dc.date.created | 2024-05 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-03-01 | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2024 | en_US |
| dc.date.updated | 2024-05-21T21:03:51Z | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | What strategies do elites use to evade accountability for corruption, and what are the consequences for voter loyalty in Latin America? To date, most studies examine electoral accountability from voters’ perspectives exclusively. However, whether electoral accountability will occur can depend on elite behavior, particularly an elite’s ability to evade accountability. My dissertation flips the concept of electoral accountability—historically emphasizing voters’ agency—on its head by asking what elites do to escape accountability for malfeasance. In three papers, I investigate three strategies that corrupt elites use to ensure continued voter loyalty: “competency compensation,” “feminization,” and “anticorruption appeals.” First, I examine how voters respond to elites using competency in political performance areas to compensate for corruption. Using a conjoint experiment in Argentina, I test if corrupt candidates with greater levels of competency across six performance areas maintain more voter support than incompetent candidates. Second, I study whether political parties run more female candidates after a corruption scandal in order to diminish electoral backlash due to common voter perceptions that women are less corrupt than men. I field a survey experiment in Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Chile to test if voters actually prefer female candidates after a corruption scandal. Third, I explore which legislators are more likely to sponsor anticorruption legislation and when. I argue that anticorruption work is strategically prioritized by opposition legislators, and I test these expectations with bill proposal data and elite interviews from the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. Overall, this research shows that elites in some contexts evade accountability successfully by demonstrating competency in select performance areas. I also find that engagement with anticorruption legislation is a strategic choice made largely by opposition elites when corruption becomes highly salient to voters. Elevating women to candidacies after corruption succeeds in dampening electoral accountability only in contexts where women are strongly associated with being less corrupt. By better understanding how corrupt elites in Latin America can maintain voter loyalty despite their malfeasance, researchers and anticorruption practitioners can develop more effective responses to corruption that strengthen electoral accountability even in the face of elites’ attempts to weaken it. | en_US |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Elia, Emily. Evading Electoral Accountability: How Elites Maintain Voter Support in Contexts of Corruption. (2024). PhD diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116089 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116089 | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder. | en_US |
| dc.subject | comparative politics | en_US |
| dc.subject | corruption | en_US |
| dc.subject | electoral accountability | en_US |
| dc.subject | Latin America | en_US |
| dc.subject | voter behavior | en_US |
| dc.subject | elite behavior | en_US |
| dc.title | Evading Electoral Accountability: How Elites Maintain Voter Support in Contexts of Corruption | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
| dc.type.material | Text | en_US |
| thesis.degree.department | Political Science | en_US |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Social Sciences | en_US |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Rice University | en_US |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | en_US |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy | en_US |
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