Replication Data for: Essays on Political Corruption

This dissertation presents three essays offering explanations for the persistence of corruption despite electoral competition. This file contains replication data for the third essay. The third essay argues that to understand when voters hold politicians accountable for corruption, it is necessary to understand who they perceive to be corrupt. It presents evidence from a survey experiment showing that American voters perceive copartisan politicians to be less corrupt than those from the other political party or without a party label. This pattern is consistent with motivated reasoning in which voters expend extra cognitive resources to process information that contradicts their partisan leanings rather than from the use of party labels as heuristics to avoid cognitive burdens. Furthermore, I show that the ideological orientation of the media source reporting allegations of corruption affects whether they are viewed as credible. Counterstereotypical allegations – i.e., those that come from a media source that is ideologically similar to the politician – are taken more seriously by respondents. In fact, when partisans view counterstereotypical allegations, they exhibit less bias toward copartisans. In sum, this research demonstrates that in-group favoritism poses a challenge to democratic accountability, but that motivated reasoning is bounded by the evidence voters view, and thus that media sources with well-known ideological orientations may serve a particularly important role in encouraging democratic accountability among their bases.

本学位论文包含三篇研究短文，旨在解释选举竞争背景下腐败现象长期存续的成因。本文件包含第三篇研究短文的复现数据集。第三篇研究短文提出，要理解选民何时会因腐败行为追究政客责任，首先需要明确选民认定哪些政客存在腐败行为。该研究通过一项调查实验提供实证证据，显示美国选民认为同党派政客相较于其他党派政客或无党派政客，腐败程度更低。这一模式符合动机性推理（motivated reasoning）的特征：选民会投入额外认知资源处理与其党派倾向相悖的信息，而非仅将党派标签作为规避认知负担的启发式线索。此外，本研究还表明，报道腐败指控的媒体的意识形态倾向，会影响公众对该指控可信度的判断。反刻板印象指控——即来自与政客意识形态立场相近的媒体的指控——会被受访对象更为严肃地对待。事实上，当党派支持者接触到反刻板印象指控时，他们对同党派政客的偏见会有所减弱。综上，本研究表明，内群体偏爱（in-group favoritism）会对民主问责（democratic accountability）构成挑战，但动机性推理会受到选民所接触证据的约束；因此，具有明确意识形态倾向的媒体，或可在巩固自身受众群体的民主问责意识方面发挥尤为重要的作用。