By Andrew Eggers and Alexander Fisher
The 2009 UK
expenses scandal brought to light the scope of MPs’ use of their
allowances and has led to public outrage regarding the politicians’
abuse of power. In this study, Eggers and Fisher examine voters’
electoral response to revelations of corruption, employing four distinct
measures of corruption implications. Their results show that electoral
outcomes were affected by the expenses scandal during the course of the
2010 general election; however, the intuitive predictions do not correspond to the findings directly.
By couching their
analysis in two distinct literature – one that investigates voters’
electoral response to corruption in other countries and one that looks at how
British voters evaluate individual candidate characteristics other than the
candidate’s party – the authors are able to offer analysis of voter response to
individual politician characteristics in the UK, as well as contribute to the
general study of electoral accountability. Findings from around the world
suggest that voters tend to punish those representatives who they know to be
malfeasant during their office tenure. These findings are challenged by the
specifics of British politics, whereby British voters have been found to be
fairly unresponsive to corruption charges in previous studies, due to the fact
that they normally assign votes to parties, rather than individuals.
In
order to gauge an MP’s implication in the expenses scandal, Eggers and Fisher
employ four different measures to test what provokes the strongest reaction in
voters. These measures include: 1) the amount of expenses claimed by each MP;
2) the amount of money each MP was expected to repay following the Legg audit;
3) media coverage of the expenses scandal; and 4) and a subjective measure that
combines the amount the MP was asked to repay and the type of expenses claim
used. Their analysis considers 485 out of 646 MPs elected in the 2005
elections, excluding Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPS, as well as those
MPs whose constituency boundaries had been significantly changed between the
two elections.
The study finds that
the expenses scandal had two types of outcomes on Election Day. It determined
which of the involved politicians chose to relist and established what
influenced voters when they cast their votes. However, different aspects of the
corruption scandal seem to have influenced the two outcomes. The decision to
compete in the election is significantly correlated with the amount of money
that the MP claimed for his second home expenses. Contrastingly, voters
punished those politicians who were frequently the topic of media coverage and
those considered implicated by means of the subjective coding. In an elegant
discussion, Eggers and Fisher posit that the different influences for different
responses are couched in the imbalance of perceptions between MPs and the
public. They argue that MPs have come to accept allowances as a supplement to a
modest salary, while voters perceived the use of expenses as an ethical issue.
As such, the decision to retire, on the basis of the amount claimed, is
possibly motivated by the potential loss of income – and not the fear of
electoral punishment. Whereas, voters’ responded more fervently to the ethical
concerns detailing the use of expenses, rather than the amount claimed.
This study sheds
light on electoral accountability in the UK, highlighting the institutional
constraints that can influence the British voters’ ability to directly punish
misbehaving politicians, while also drawing attention to the differences in
public and political perceptions of malfeasance. The use of four different
measures to gauge politicians’ involvement in the expenses scandal provides a
rich basis for analysis, allowing the authors to investigate the motivations
underlying the two important outcomes: politicians’ decision to relist and
voters’ choice at the ballot.
Comments