Political Disclosure and Electoral Selection

• In Event: Elections, Accountability, and Representation

Abstract

How is the desire of citizens to run for local public office influenced by the existence of disclosure laws and how do citizens trade them off with other institutional arrangements like wages or discretion in office? One of the main objectives of elections is to improve the quality of government and public service provision by selecting the most competent candidates and disciplining them once they are in office. One prominent accountability mechanism are transparency laws. For example, laws may force politicians to disclose their income from side jobs to discourage conflicts of interest between public office and side jobs. However, the effect of disclosure laws on the quality of politicians running for office remains ambiguous. Tighter disclosure has been found to have positive effect on the quality of candidates while other studies found null effects on incumbent turnover.

This paper contributes to the literature on political selection by analyzing across 12 developed and developing countries how different institutional rules of office affect the desire of potential candidates to run for office. First, we argue that one must consider how potential candidates trade off costs and benefits of public office, such as the trade-off between tighter disclosure laws and other institutional characteristics, like discretion or wages paid in public office. Second, we argue that individuals with intrinsic or extrinsic motivations might value and trade off different institutional rules differently. We first elicit preferences for national disclosure regulation and lobby rules using two conjoint experiments. Second, using a factorial experiment, we randomly vary hypothetical local office rules and study their effects on the desire of respondents to run for local office.

While we expect that higher wages and more discretion have a positive effect on the desire of citizens to run for office, we suggest that the effects might be different depending on the motivation of potential candidates. While more discretion can enable politicians to react to shocks, socially motivated candidates may use discretion for public benefit by increasing the efficiency of policy adoption and implementation. However, they might prefer tighter disclosure laws and more transparency because it reduces the probability of theft. Personally motivated candidates may use higher discretion as an opportunity for personal career development or even theft.

We contribute in four ways. First, while a large literature investigates the effects of transparency and disclosure of corruption on electoral outcomes this is, to our knowledge, the first study to investigate the preferences of voters for political disclosure rules. Second, we add to the nascent literature on voter preferences on disclosure of income and assets by politicians by investigating relative importance voters attach to different dimensions of financial disclosure Third, we provide tentative micro-level evidence for a perceived trade-off between more political transparency and information transmission between lobbyists and politicians. Finally, by studying the selection into office and the perceived trade-offs between disclosure rules and other office characteristics, we show how disclosure rules matter for political selection and representation.

Authors

• Heike Klüver, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

• Jan Stuckatz, Copenhagen Business School

• Felix Hartmann, Copenhagen Business School

• Kai-Uwe Schnapp, Universität Hamburg