Perceptions of Local Political Corruption

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241265960
• Author: Thomas M. Holbrook,Amanda Heideman,Aaron Weinschenk
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1230–1245

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241265960

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Perceptions of Local Political Corruption

Thomas M. Holbrook

1

, Amanda Heideman

2

, and

Aaron Weinschenk

3



Abstract

In this paper, we explore the roots of perceptions of local corruption in U.S. cities, using survey data collected from 39

cities during 40 different mayoral election campaigns. We examine the impact of the city-level corruption context

alongside measures of political information, partisan and racial/ethnic representation in local government, evaluations of

personal and policy satisfaction, and other individual-level attitudinal and demographic characteristics. We f‌ind that

perceptions of local corruption are responsive to the local corruption context—though this relationship is heavily

conditioned by political knowledge—satisfaction with local conditions, other attitudinalmeasures, and, to a lesser extent,

co-ethnic representation in local government.

Keywords

corruption, local government, city government, political corruption

Political corruption has a long, storied, and sometimes

disturbing place in American political culture. From the

Yazoo land scandal in the early days of the Republic, to

the scandal-rich Grant administration, to the evolution of

urban political machines in the late 1800s, to struggles

with machine remnants in the twentieth century, to

scandals such as Watergate, ABSCAM, and the House

Banking scandal in the late 1900s, and the escapades of

Jack Abramoff and Rod Blagojevich in the 2000s, to the

impeachment of President Trump for abuse of power

related to his efforts to persuade the president of Ukraine

to announce investigations of Joe Biden, there have al-

ways been highly visible examples of political scandals,

mostly involving corrupt behavior on the part of public

off‌icials and their suitors.

By comparative standards, corruption in the United

States generally is thought to be relatively low and rel-

atively benign.

1

This, perhaps, accounts for why there is

so little contemporary research on corruption in American

politics, a condition leading one prominent scholar in the

area to refer to scholarship on U.S. corruption as a “blind

spot”in the study of American politics (Johnston 2006).

Still, this does not mean political corruption does not pose

certain risks, both of an economic and a civic nature, to the

American political system, though perhaps in different

ways than elsewhere. As Johnston puts it, “Our corruption

problem, arguably, exacts its costs in terms of the

openness, competitiveness, and credibility of our political

system, rather than in trends of GDP per capita”(Johnston

2006, 812). And some observers think it is possible that

“corruption in the United States is much more prevalent,

consequential, and resistant to correction than is often

assumed”(Etzioni 2014, 141); all the more reason to be

concerned about the lack of scholarship in the American

setting.

Studies of corruption in the U.S. mostly have focused

on public opinion on what constitutes corrupt behavior

(Dolan, McKeown, and Carlson 1988;Redlawsk and

McCann 2005), explanatory models of cross-state vari-

ation in levels of corruption (Boylan and Long 2003;Goel

and Nelson 2011;Meier and Holbrook 1992;Schlesinger

and Meier 2002;Tyburski, Egan, and Schneider 2020),

and studies of the economic and policy effects of cor-

ruption in the f‌ifty states (Depken and LaFountain 2006;

Johnson, LaFountain, and Yamarik 2011;Mitchell and

Campbell 2009;Woods 2008). This paper departs from

existing research on corruption in the U.S. in several ways

1

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

2

Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

3

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aaron Weinschenk, Department of Political Science, University of

Wisconsin-Green Bay, Nicolet Dr, Green Bay, WI 54311, USA.

Email: weinscha@uwgb.edu

and, in doing so, makes important contributions to the

literature. First, our focus is on corruption at the local

level, specif‌ically in U.S. cities. Despite the long history of

corrupt practices in local governments in the United States

(Benson, Maaranen, and Heslop 1978;Johnston 1982),

there is very little empirical research on local political

corruption. This is especially unfortunate given the rich

variation in social, demographic, cultural, and political

contexts across U.S. cities. Certainly, in comparison to the

f‌ifty states, municipalities in the U.S. offer not only im-

portant variation in those things that are likely to inf‌luence

corruption, but also likely more variation in levels and

types of corruption. The advantage of studying corruption

at the state-level, however, lies in available data com-

monly used to measure levels of corruption: federal

prosecutions of corrupt practices (Meier and Holbrook

1992;Schlesinger and Meier 2002;Tyburski, Egan, and

Schneider 2020) and elite evaluations (Boylan and Long

2003), which either do not exist or are more diff‌icult to

translate to the local level. Although corruption is a no-

toriously diff‌iculty concept to measure, we develop a

unique measure of what we call the local “corruption

context”based on media coverage of corruption and

prosecutions of public off‌icials. To our knowledge, such a

blended measure has not been used to operationalize

corruption across U.S. cities. Our approach thus provides

scholars with a way to measure local corruption in other

cities.

We also depart signif‌icantly from previous research

by focusing on peoples’perceptions of the level of

corruption in the cities in which they live. We do this by

making use of original survey data collected across

dozens of U.S. cities. Our focus on perceptions is not

just a signif‌icant departure from the study of corruption

in the U.S., but from studies of corruption more gen-

erally. While there have been studies of the impactof

perceptions of corruption on political outcomes (Arnold

2012;Zechmeister and Zizumbo-Colunga 2013), the

literature in American politics is relatively bereft of

studies of the determinants of corruption perceptions,

with most existing studies focusing on demographic

and psychological determinants of perceptions of

corruption at the national level in countries other than

the United States (Agerburg 2022;Bokayev et al.,

2023;Canache and Allison 2005;Canache et al.,

2019). While some studies of U.S. corruption focus

on elite perceptions of corruption (Boylan and Long

2003), or perceptions of what types of behavior con-

stitute corruption (Dolan, McKeown, and Carlson

1988;Redlawsk and McCann 2005), there are no

studies that examine individual perceptions of the level

of corruption, in particular at the local level.

2

In

combination with corruption the measure discussed

above, our survey data on perceptions of corruption

allow us to examine whether and how perceptions are

related to the different contexts that people live in.

Why Study Perceptions of Corruption?

There is much to be gained by understanding perceptions

of corruption, not the least of which are important insights

into the potential for accountability. A central tenet of

democratic governance is the ability of the electorate to

hold government off‌icials accountable for their actions,

including actions that may be viewed as corrupt in nature.

As Canache and Allison put it, “when citizens accurately

perceive corruption and adjust their opinions of the leader,

they will be better able to hold that leader accountable

through democratic processes”(Canache and Allison

2005, 93). As in other forms of “accountable”voting,

it is not necessarily required that members of the electorate

hold specif‌ic information about corrupt practices, and they

may do very well with perceptions of corruption in “broad

strokes,”somewhat akin to Popkin’s notion of gut-level

rationality (Popkin 1994). This view is in keeping with

Fackler and Lin’s conception of corruption as the general

level of information about corruption in the environment

rather than specif‌ic acts of corruption (Fackler and Lin

1995). Among other things, we examine the extent to

which local residents’perceptions of local corruption are

related to the level of information about corruption to

which they are exposed.

Perceptions of corruption are also important in that

they can inf‌luence a broad range of civic attitudes, as well

as the potential for cooperation among competing inter-

ests at the local level. Numerous studies have demon-

strated the impact of corruption or perceptions of

corruption on conf‌idence in government and system

support (Anderson and Tverdova 2003;Ares and

Hern´

andez 2017;Caillier 2010;Hakhverdian and

Mayne 2012;Seligson 2002). This connection is not

diff‌icult to fathom, given that almost by def‌inition corrupt

leaders should not be trusted. But beyond a general sense

of trust in government, there are longer-term implications

for support for the political system, implications that could

lead citizens to withdraw their support and perhaps opt out

of participating in political life. Lamentably, none of this

research informs us about how corruption or perceptions

of corruption affect the connection between the electorate

and their local governments, as it focuses on support at the

national (Anderson and Tverdova 2003;Ares and

Hern´

andez 2017;Hakhverdian and Mayne 2012;

Seligson 2002) or state level (Caillier 2010).

Explaining Differences

We model perceptions of corruption as a function of the

informationenvironment, individualdifferences in political

Holbrook et al.1231