CONFLICT OF INTEREST, POLICY EFFECTIVENESS, AND ELECTORAL SUPPORT: EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY EXPERIMENT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of the facts of conflict of interest on the electoral support of politicians. To identify causality in the Russian sample, a vignette experiment was conducted, in which respondents received various facts about the biography of candidates. Respondents were asked to answer questions about the attractiveness of politicians and the potential desire to vote for them based on the information received. According to the results of the study, it was found that the disclosure of the facts of the existence of a conflict of interest has a direct impact on the level of support for candidates in individual cases. The effect is significant if the politician has previously demonstrated high performance in the implementation of socio-economic policy. On the contrary, potential voters turned out to be tolerant of information about a conflict of interest in case of inefficiency of politicians in previous periods. The empirical results obtained are partially consistent with previous experiments in other countries and contribute to the discussion about building the election campaign of incumbents. Separately, the article highlights the methodological features of conducting experiments in the social sciences, including the potential limitations imposed by the chosen design on the interpretation of the empirical results obtained.