Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331468 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
ISER Discussion Paper No. 1289
Publisher: 
Osaka University, Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka
Abstract: 
Electoral accountability is a cornerstone of democratic governance, yet whether voters effectively punish corruption remains theoretically and empirically contested. While canonical models predict that corruption revelations reduce incumbent support, strategic voting considerations-especially beliefs about others' behavior-can yield ambiguous accountability outcomes. We exploit a major corruption scandal involving Japan's ruling party during a national election to examine how social information shapes electoral responses to misconduct. In a pre-registered field experiment, we randomly provided voters with information about prevailing social norms of intolerance toward the scandal. This intervention significantly increased overall turnout and challenger support, particularly among swing voters, consistent with enhanced accountability. Yet the same treatment increased incumbent support among ruling-party loyalists. We show that these heterogeneous effects are systematically driven by voters' prior beliefs about others' voting intentions: those expecting others to punish sanctioned more when learning they would not, whereas those expecting tolerance defended more when learning others would punish. These findings reconcile conflicting evidence on electoral accountability by showing how strategic considerations fundamentally shape democratic sanctioning, and suggest that information campaigns can either strengthen or undermine accountability depending on the distribution of voter expectations, with important implications for anti-corruption interventions.
Subjects: 
Political accountability
corruption
misperception
social norm
strategic voting
moral
partisan identity
information campaign
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.