Political Institutions and Party-Directed Corruption in South America
Stealing for the Team

This book examines how the structure of electoral institutions may affect political corruption.

Daniel W. Gingerich (Author)

9781107656093, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 April 2016

304 pages, 25 b/w illus. 2 maps 20 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

'Political corruption is the art of stealing the money of citizens to win their vote. Daniel W. Gingerich provides brilliant portraits of how these two activities are connected, writing with both great precision and flair about how bureaucratic recruitment and ballot designs shape the fate of political incumbents. With an impressive design that combines case studies, formal models, and survey data, Gingerich's book is both substantively important and a blueprint of how to conduct research in political science today.' Ernesto Calvo, University of Maryland

An important question for the health and longevity of democratic governance is how institutions may be fashioned to prevent electoral victors from drawing on the resources of the state to perpetuate themselves in power. This book addresses the issue by examining how the structure of electoral institutions - the rules of democratic contestation that determine the manner in which citizens choose their representatives - affects political corruption, defined as the abuse of state power or resources for campaign finance or party-building purposes. To this end, the book develops a novel theoretical framework that examines electoral institutions as a potential vehicle for political parties to exploit the state as a source of political finance. Hypotheses derived from this framework are assessed using an unprecedented public employees' survey conducted by the author in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile.

1. Institutions and political corruption: a framework
2. Institutional design and the case for mechanism-based analysis
3. Ballot structure, political corruption, and the performance of proportional representation
4. An approach to overcoming the fundamental problem of inference in corruption studies
5. Political career paths in the bureaucracy and the use of institutional resources in Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile
6. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Public finance [KFFD], Comparative politics [JPB], Hispanic & Latino studies [JFSL4]