It's the Bribe, Stupid! Pocketbook vs. Sociotropic Corruption Voting

We examine the relationship between corruption and voting behavior. Theoretically, we build on the existing economic voting literature to provide a framework for thinking about how corruption a ects voting behavior: pocketbook corruption voting is de ned as the e ect of personal experiences with corruption on voting behavior; sociotropic corruption voting is de ned as the e ect of perceptions about corruption in one's society on voting behavior. Empirically, we utilize survey data from Slovakia to conclude that corruption voting exists, but, somewhat surprisingly, in repeated tests we also nd evidence that pocketbook corruption voting is much more prevalent than sociotropic corruption voting. In addition, we introduce a novel experimental design for testing the relative importance of pocketbook and sociotropic corruption voting, and presents results from running this experiment in Bulgaria that also suggest pocketbook corruption voting is more prevalent than sociotropic corruption voting.