In the Eyes of the Beholder? Understanding Policymakers' Perceptions of Corruption

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• Author: Cristian Márquez Romo,Xavier Romero‐Vidal
• Date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12407

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LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 48, 3, August 2023

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12407

CRISTIAN MÁRQUEZ ROMO

University of Salamanca

XAVIER ROMERO- VIDAL

University of Cambridge

In the Eyes of the Beholder?

Understanding Policymakers’

Perceptions of Corruption

Most research on corruption attitudes focuses exclusively on voters, despite

the strategic role of political elites in anticorruption efforts. To fill this research

gap, we study the drivers of perceptions of corruption among legislators, using

comparative longitudinal survey data of over 3000 policymakers in 18 Latin

American countries. We develop a novel theoretical framework based on the in-

fluence of motivated reasoning and the moderating effect of the economic con-

text. Our results suggest that legislators supporting the government systematically

perceive lower levels of corruption in contexts of economic growth. Conversely,

opposition legislators consistently consider corruption an important issue, re-

gardless of the macroeconomic situation. Since the perceptions of corruption for

legislators supporting the government are dependent on the economic context,

our results show that both government and opposition legislators are likely to per-

ceive corruption as a relevant issue during economic downturns, suggesting that

economic crises can open windows of opportunity for anticorruption reforms.

Introduction

Corruption is a major challenge for democratic governance, as

it disrupts the functioning of the rule of law, contributes to underde-

velopment, and lowers citizen’s trust in institutions and political pro-

cesses (Holmes2006; Mauro1995; Morris and Klesner2010; You and

Khagram2005). While abundant research has studied perceptions of

The authors declare no conflict of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

© 2022 The Authors. Legislative Studies Quarterly published by Wiley

Periodicals LLC on behalf of Washington University in St. Louis.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly

cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

536 Cristian Márquez Romo and Xavier Romero‐Vidal

corruption among the public (Anduiza et al.2013; Blais et al.2010;

Chang et al.2009; Golden2006; Slomczynski and Shabad2012), lit-

tle is known about perceptions of corruption among those who are

tasked with controlling corruption through legislation.

Among voters, perceptions of corruption seem largely a

function of the information available, the credibility assigned to

it, and the extent to which corruption is considered to be impor-

tant vis- à- vis other issues (Anduiza et al.2013; Breitenstein2019;

Winters and Weitz- Shapiro 2013; Zechmeister and Zizumbo-

Colunga2013). However, this extensive literature on corruption

perceptions among mass publics stands in contrast with the lack

of studies on the drivers of corruption perceptions among legisla-

tors. This research gap is particularly relevant, since policymakers

are expected to implement anticorruption measures despite weak

or even negative incentives to do so (Brinkerhoff2000; Boly and

Gillanders2018; Fritzen2005; Pope and Vogl2000). This results in

a structural difficulty to enhance stringent anticorruption policies.

In order to shed light on elites’ attitudes towards corruption,

we develop a novel theoretical framework based on the influence

of motivated reasoning and the moderating effect of economic

performance on perceptions of corruption among political elites.

To test our expectations, we rely on a comparative longitudinal

survey data of 3000 policymakers from 18 Latin American coun-

tries, collected over the span of 10 years (2009– 19).

Our results suggest that legislators supporting the govern-

ment systematically perceive lower corruption levels. The eco-

nomic context can increase such governing effect, as legislators

belonging to the ruling majority are less likely to see corruption

as an important issue when the economic context is improving.

Conversely, opposition legislators consistently perceive corruption

as an important issue, regardless of the macroeconomic situation.

Our results indicate that the economic context can also reduce

the governing effect, since government legislators are more likely

to consider corruption as a more important issue in periods of

economic hardship. Thus, the economic context can reduce the

government- opposition perception gap. Based on these results, we

posit that economic crises can open windows of opportunity to

approve anticorruption reforms.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. First, we de-

velop our theoretical framework to explain elites’ perceptions of

corruption, building on the literature on the incumbency disadvan-

tage, motivated reasoning, and the moderating effect of economic