Andreas Bågenholm

Do Politics in Europe Benefit from Politicising Corruption

In this article, two unexplored trends in European electoral politics are highlighted. Using newly collected data the article tracks the politicisation of corruption in electoral campaigns from 1981 to 2011, an electoral strategy that has been increasing over time in most European countries. It then empirically tests two aspects of this campaign strategy. First, what are the factors that are systematically associated with a party’s decision to politicise corruption? Second, what are the electoral effects in terms of relative vote share for parties that politicise corruption? Using an original data-set that employs multi-level data (parties nested in countries) the results demonstrate first that politicisation of corruption occurs systematically more often among established parties from the main opposition, new parties and parties on the political right, and occurs as a function of country-level corruption, district magnitude and public party financing. Second, it is found that the main opposition and new parties that use such a campaign strategy make significant electoral gains relative to the previous election compared to parties that do not politicise corruption. Yet gains are offset in low-corruption countries. The findings demonstrate salient implications for research on party systems, corruption studies and democratic legitimacy, among other areas of investigation.

The electoral fate and policy impact of “anti-corruption parties” in Central and Eastern Europe

Niche parties have been increasingly successful during the last 30 years and have accordingly received a lot of scholarly attention. So far most of the focus has been on Green and radical right parties, and to a more limited extent, regional parties. In this paper I analyze the electoral fates and policy outcomes of another type of niche party, namely those focusing on anti-corruption, whose successes culminated during the 2000s. The study is limited to all new parties campaigning on the issue of anti-corruption in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall and the questions to be answered are: To what extent are these parties successful in obtaining relevant positions in the government so that they are able to effectively fight corruption? What impact do they have on anti-corruption measures, thereby influencing the level of corruption? How successful are these parties in the elections that follow? In short, to what extent do anticorruption parties matter? Apart from electoral and governmental data, the analysis is based on the Freedom House Nation in Transit annual reports, in which one section deals with the efforts to curb corruption. The results are rather mixed, but indicate that the more influential positions the anti-corruption parties (ACPs) have in government, the better are their anti-corruption performances. That implies that they are serious and competent enough to tackle those issues, despite their newness and lack of experience. Not surprisingly, the incumbent ACPs fare worse than those in opposition in subsequent elections, but quite a few still remain popular. Finally, all but one party abandoned their anti-corruption rhetoric in their second election, which implies that anti-corruption is a different type of issue, compared to the ones used by previous niche parties.

Anti-Corruption Parties and Good Government

Although corruption voting, that is, the extent to which the voters punish corrupt politicians and under what circumstances they do so, has been an increasingly hot topic during the last decade, relatively little attention has been paid to the ‘award-side’ of the equation, that is, the extent of voter support for parties and candidates whose main campaign issue is anti-corruption. It is surprising, not least because such parties, despite often being newly created, have had huge successes in parliamentary elections during the last 15 years, above all in Central and Eastern Europe, where they not only managed to win parliamentary representation but in several cases also made it all the way to the government and even obtaining the position of prime minister. In contrast to other niche parties, which only rarely have assumed any prominent governmental positions, it is thus possible to actually examine what ‘Anti-Corruption Parties’ or ACPs actually accomplish once in power. In this chapter, we summarize and discuss our findings in this area.

Political data in 2013

Although countries had succeeded by 2013 in putting economic crisis behind them, others continued to struggle with austerity, high unemployment and cumbersome debt. While the economy remained a dominant theme of the year, it was certainly not the only one. Some countries turned their attention to cultural issues such as gay marriage and women’s rights, while others tried to tackle the endemic problem of corruption. There was a new round of scandals, and a growing indication of widespread disillusionment with politics. In several countries, voters rejected seasoned politicians in favour of nonpartisan experts, and in some countries, frustration with politics spilled over into violence. On the international scene, the credibility of the Eurozone remained weakened by a series of bail-outs, the crisis in Syria created domestic tensions concerning refugees, and the documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the United States National Security Agency turned into an international diplomatic row.

Does Gender Matter? Female Politicians’ Engagement in Anti-corruption Efforts

The research on gender and corruption has shown a positive link between the percentage of women in elected office and lower levels of corruption. This research has not focused much on the individual-level behavior of MPs but has nevertheless assumed individual-level mechanisms behind this link. Thus, there is a need to open this “black box” in order to find out whether female politicians actually engage successfully in anti-corruption efforts and to a higher extent than men. In this chapter we investigate whether female politicians have politicized corruption more often than men in election campaigns during the last twenty-five years. The results show that even though female candidates tend to politicize corruption more frequently, they rarely make it to a position powerful enough to influence policies directly.