Do voters differentially punish transnational corruption?

Abstract

A large literature studies whether, and under what circumstances, voters will electorally punish corrupt politicians. Yet this literature has to date neglected the empirical prevalence of transnational dimensions to real-world corruption allegations, even as corruption studies undergo a ‘transnational turn’. We use a survey experiment in the United Kingdom in 2020 to investigate whether voters differentially punish politicians associated with transnational corruption and test four different potential mechanisms: information salience, country-based discrimination, economic nationalism and expected representation. We find evidence suggesting that voters indeed differentially punish transnational corruption, but only when it involves countries perceived negatively by the public (i.e. a ‘Moscow-based firm’). This is most consistent with a mechanism of country-based discrimination, while we find no evidence consistent with any other mechanism. These results suggest that existing experimental studies might understate the potential for electoral accountability by neglecting real-world corruption allegations’ frequent transnational dimension.