Rotten Eggs or Bad Apples: Corruption Arrests and Public Opinion in Russia

• In Event: Domestic Political Violence, Arrests, and Public Attitudes

Abstract

Information about corruption can be a powerful force in shaping how the public assesses politicians and the political system. In autocracies, malfeasance frequently serves as a spark for discontent. As a result, authoritarian leaders often attempt to portray egregious cases of corruption in a neutral or positive light: these are merely a few bad apples, whom the regime is evidently finding success in rooting out. When does the public view corrupt officials as emblematic of a rotten regime and when do they see them as isolated cases of an imperfect regime doing its best to clean house? In this paper, I examine the effects of officials in an authoritarian regime being legally punished for corruption on public opinion. I compile a dataset of millions of public opinion survey responses regarding regime approval in Putin-era Russia from 2003-2022 and combine this with extensive region-level data on the arrest, prosecution, and jailing of officials. Together with a difference-in-differences design, this allows me to identify the positive, negative, or neutral effects of the discovery of corruption in an authoritarian regime on the public’s attitudes. Heterogeneous effects by demographic cohorts and previous regime support help me differentiate between disillusionment and localized disappointment mechanisms. This research has implications for our understanding of when corruption may spark wider discontent: the risks of punishing corruption when considering authoritarian public opinion.

Author

• Noah Buckley, Trinity College Dublin