How do voters behave when discovering a political infraction?

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Responsible researcher: Pedro Jorge Holanda Alves

Article title : NORMS VERSUS ACTION:WHY VOTERS FAIL TO
SANCTION MALFEASANCE IN BRAZIL

Article authors : Taylor C. Boas, F. Daniel Hidalgo and
Marcus André Melo

Intervention Location : Brazil

Sample Size : 3,200 observations

Sector : Economic Policy and Governance

Type of Intervention : Effect of political infraction on
voter behavior

Variable of Main Interest : Votes for mayor

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

Within the global political scenario, the democratic system prevails in most countries. However, the system suffers in some situations by opening space for political agents who, instead of generating benefits for society, choose to corrupt the system, which may involve bribery or embezzlement of public funds, or the use of authority for private benefit. . Others may not be directly involved in corruption, but violate imposed laws, ignoring budget targets, failing to pay employees, among others.

One solution to these problems is to increase voters' level of information about how the local government has been adopting public policy measures. In different scenarios, studies on the subject have shown that politicians accused of corruption are penalized in their candidacy for re-election when the local or national media provides coverage of the scandals. This way, the region's population will have the opportunity to punish politicians who break the law. Under pressure, politicians are expected to be less corrupt in their decision-making.

Another point that deserves to be highlighted is the changes in voter behavior when it comes to hypothetical and real scenarios. Hypothetical psychological experiments are appropriate to analyze voter behavior, since this type of analysis allows us to indicate how these inspection norms translate into actions - or lack thereof.

Assessment Context

In Brazil since the 90s, efforts have been made to create laws and institutions that have the capacity to punish corrupt attitudes of public entities. Among the institutions, the Federal Audit Court (TCU) and the State Audit Courts (TCEs) stand out, institutions responsible for monitoring government behavior based on the application of laws relating to the budget and public administration. Punishments for audits carried out by these institutions have serious consequences for politicians.

The evolution of inspection institutions has been showing progress. For example, in 2010, if the TCU or TCE rejects the mayor's public accounts, the Clean Record law allowed candidates to be prevented from running for 8 years. Even though years later the law has been weakened, there is still a great importance of the law in combating corruption.

For empirical application of the problems exposed, Boas et al. (2018) examined the effect of information about the incumbent mayor's bad faith on the behavior of Brazilian voters. From the implementation of a field survey in the state of Pernambuco (PE), the authors were able to apply an experiment, in which voters are informed about the irregularities of mayors running for re-election in 2016. At the same time, voters are also asked which behavior would take if a hypothetical mayor had had his accounts rejected by the Federal Audit Court.

Policy Details

This research was carried out together with TCE-PE, which in addition to providing assistance and support in the research, also indicated the number of municipalities that had their bills rejected. To apply the hypothetical experiment, the authors used a scenario in which the interviewee must imagine a city similar to the one he lives in, in which the mayor has managed well, but the State Audit Court has disapproved the city's accounts. mayor in 2013 for finding serious problems in budget administration. Based on this hypothetical situation, interviewees were asked, on a scale of 0 to 4, how likely they were to vote for the mayor of that municipality.

The experiment is divided into two groups, where one group receives information about the mayor's irregularities and a group that does not receive this information. To avoid contamination effects between the comparability of field and hypothetical experiments, the authors examine hypothetical treatment effects only in municipalities that had bills rejected but that never received a pamphlet with this information.

In order to obtain the best results, the authors presented information related to irregularities only 2 to 3 weeks before the election, a period in which candidacies had already been declared and voters were probably deciding which was the best option for their vote. Opting for this strategy seems ideal, since information during a period of choice has a greater impact than an accusation released by the media several years before the election. Another way to obtain better results was to take care to prepare the questions and details, in order to generate the best possible understanding and not generate campaign propaganda.

Methodology details

The selection of interviewees was selected randomly with the same probability of selection within the municipality's census sector, separating into three groups: a treatment group that received information about the approval or rejection of their mayor's accounts, a pure control group that did not receive any information and a treatment group that received information about the performance of schools in the municipality. The application of randomness makes it possible to apply in a simple way and consists of estimates using the Average Treatment Effect as differences between means, controlling only the fixed effects of census regions, since randomness eliminates any problem of inconsistency in estimates.

The survey on mayors' reports is made up of 3,200 adult voters in 47 municipalities in the state of Pernambuco. The base includes municipalities in which the mayor ran for re-election in 2016 and the TCE of Pernambuco had already judged the 2013 accounts. This way, all seven municipalities in which the mayor had his accounts rejected and still chose to run for re-election are included. and another 40 municipalities were randomly selected and had their bills approved. Overall, 40 voters were interviewed in municipalities that had their bills approved and between 80 and 416 voters in municipalities where the mayor had their bills rejected, totaling 1,600 respondents for each group.

A second round of research was carried out, carried out between 2 and 4 weeks after the election, interviewing 2,577 individuals and asked whether the respondent voted for the current mayor or not. To reduce response bias, the authors use printed ballots, which respondents are asked to deposit in an envelope with the answer to the question.

Results

The hypothetical results show that telling respondents that the hypothetical mayor's bills were rejected reduces the likelihood of voting for him by 44 percentage points. However, in the field experiment, informing respondents about the approval or rejection of their mayor's bills has no significant effect on voting behavior. Although the result indicates the expected direction, these effects are substantially small and statistically insignificant. In particular, the estimated effect of the bill rejection treatment on voting for the incumbent is almost exactly zero.

But why do norms regarding punishment affect the hypothetical scenario, but do not influence the behavior of elected officials on election day? The authors list two main factors. First, even if voters consider corruption to be an act of bad faith, these same people who live directly consider corruption to be a low-level concern compared to health care, job creation, and other issues that politics affects. Secondly, political factors related to partisanship can make voters decide to vote based on party identification, limiting the potential for information to change voting behavior.

When individuals are confronted with hypothetical scenarios, the results indicate that these voters are willing to punish incumbent politicians who are faced with improbability in public accounts; However, when this hypothetical scenario is faced with the real situation, the results do not hold, indicating that informing voters about the acceptance or rejection of the public accounts of the mayor of the city where the individuals live does not change the effect on the decision to vote for re-election. of the mayor. The authors highlight that the divergence between the scenarios can be attributed to concerns related to job creation and health services.

Public Policy Lessons

We can learn some lessons from this experiment. On the one hand, field experiments clearly reflect the best option for understanding how voter information affects a real election. On the other hand, the hypothetical experiment offers signs of how people would act in more general cases, in which the individual would act regardless of the source, partisanship, different types of corruption or other factors. Factors imposed in hypothetical situations are impossible to manipulate experimentally in the real world. In other words, even if the electorate wants the mayor to be punished for some government irregularity, this does not always happen in the real world. The existence of factors related to partisanship or political needs means that even knowing about the irregularity, the individual becomes indifferent.

Reference

BOAS, Taylor C.; HIDALGO, F. Daniel; MELO, Marcus André. Norms versus action: Why voters fail to sanction malfeasance in Brazil. American Journal of Political Science, vol. 63, no. 2, p. 385-400, 2019.