Corruption and extremism

Abstract

This paper shows that corruption generates extremism, but mainly on the opposition side. While corruption hurts all citizens, only voters on the minority side may desire to switch to a more extreme representative when they perceive a more corrupt political system. In our model, campaigning on a corruption scandal against the incumbent gives a higher winning probability for the opposition politician but simultaneously reduces expected future rents from office. As extremist politicians normally are less likely to win against a moderate opponent, they have a stronger incentive to take a stand against corruption. Given that the side of the political minority has a lower chance of having their representative elected to office, they face a smaller opportunity cost of voting for extremists. Our main result is that minorities are more likely to react to corruption with more extremism. We provide causal evidence for this novel asymmetric prediction from Indonesia and Brazil.