Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Corruption and Incumbency Disadvantage in New Democracies

该奖项符合SEC第五章B组的要求。《2013年综合及进一步继续拨款法案》(2013年3月26日制定的第113-6号法律公告)第543条。该项目解决了新兴民主国家的腐败问题，这是一个对世界政治稳定至关重要的问题。因此，发展对政治腐败的理解对美国的国家安全利益至关重要。该项目解决了一个重要的谜题：为什么在许多新的民主政体中，现任政客似乎处于不利地位(赢得连任的可能性低于被挑战者击败的可能性)，腐败在这一过程中扮演着什么角色？智力优势：该项目开发并测试了一种理论，该理论认为现任腐败--滥用职权谋取私利--是这一劣势的重要来源。众所周知，在较年轻和较贫穷的民主政体中，腐败现象比老牌的较富裕民主政体更严重。当选民无法确切知道谁腐败时，在许多情况下，选民通常会支持挑战者，而不是任何现任总统。这包括如果大多数政客都腐败，如果潜在的腐败现任者很少但特别贪婪，或者腐败的政客能够迅速学会如何更好地提取资源(即变得更有效率地腐败)。从经验上验证这一假设具有挑战性，因为腐败很难准确地观察和衡量，而且许多与腐败有关的因素--例如贫困或不平等--可能反而会解释在任劣势。为了应对这些挑战，该项目在一项对罗马尼亚市长选举的研究中依靠大量数据来推断现任市长的腐败行为，其中包括：(1)4,000多份公开的资产申报，以发现现任市长中不正常的财富积累；(2)地方公共公司签订了100多万份合同，以确定可疑的高价格、没有竞争力的投标或与政治有关联的获奖者；(3)将基础设施的预算支出与其实际实物存量变化的数据进行比较，以发现公共资金支出中的漏洞；(4)来自10,000多家公司的数据，以揭露共产主义继承的国有财产的腐败私有化。此外，该项目利用了罗马尼亚的一个独特制度：根据法律，一旦一个城市的人口超过一定的门槛，市长的工资就会增加。先前的研究表明，更高的薪酬减少了对非法收入的需求，并吸引了更多正直的候选人竞选公职，从而减少了腐败。这一规则允许比较人口略高于和低于这些工资门槛的城市的在职(DIS)优势。接近这些门槛的城市在许多其他重要方面应该是相似的，除了市长的工资(因此，推而广之，腐败)。这一战略不变地保留了现任不利的其他潜在原因，并隔离了腐败的影响。更广泛的影响：研究罗马尼亚等年轻民主国家的在任劣势具有重要意义，原因有几个。虽然在位劣势可能是对腐败的一种可取的回应，但它也可能导致高度的政策不稳定，并阻碍高素质的候选人竞选政治职位。政策高度不稳定和政治精英素质低都可能威胁经济和社会稳定，并最终危及持久民主和经济增长的前景。不稳定的社会对国际安全和贸易构成威胁，包括美国的利益。学习如何更好地预测这种不稳定的来源，可以更好地为外交政策决策和反腐败计划提供信息。

This award satisfies Division B, Title V, Sec. 543 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-6, enacted on March 26, 2013). The project addresses corruption in emerging democracies, an issue critical to political stability in the world. Developing an understanding of political corruption is therefore vital for US national security interests. The project addresses an important puzzle: why does it seem that incumbent politicians are disadvantaged (less likely to win re-election than to be defeated by challengers) in many new democracies, and what role does corruption play in this process? Intellectual Merit: The project develops and tests a theory that proposes that incumbent corruption -- misuse of office for private gain -- is an important source of this disadvantage. Corruption is known to be higher in younger and poorer democracies than in established richer democracies. When voters cannot know exactly who is corrupt, there are many conditions under which voters will generally favor a challenger over any incumbent. This includes if the majority of politicians are corrupt, if potentially corrupt incumbents are rare but particularly rapacious, or if corrupt politicians can learn quickly how to better extract resources (i.e., become "more efficient at being corrupt"). Empirically verifying this hypothesis is challenging because corruption is difficult to observe and measure precisely, and because many factors related to corruption -- such as poverty or inequality -- may instead account for the incumbency disadvantage. To address these challenges, the project relies on extensive data to infer incumbent corruption in a study of Romanian mayoral elections, including: (1) more than 4,000 publicly available declarations of assets to detect abnormal wealth accumulation among incumbents; (2) over 1 million contracts by local public companies to identify suspiciously high prices, uncompetitive bids, or politically-connected awardees; (3) a comparison of budgeted expenditures on infrastructure with data on changes in its actual physical stock to identify leakages in public funds spending; and (4) data from more than 10,000 firms to uncover corrupt privatization of state property inherited from communism. Further, the project takes advantage of a unique institution in Romania: by law, the salary of the mayor increases once a city's population exceeds a certain threshold. Prior research has suggested that better pay decreases the need for illegitimate income and attracts more upstanding candidates for office, resulting in lower corruption. This rule permits a comparison of the incumbency (dis)advantage in cities with populations just above and below these salary thresholds. Cities near these thresholds should be similar in many other important respects except for the mayor's salary (and so, by extension, corruption). This strategy holds constant other potential causes of incumbency disadvantage and isolates the effect of corruption. Broader Impacts: Studying incumbency disadvantage in a young democracy such as Romania is important for several reasons. While incumbency disadvantage may be a desirable response to corruption, it also likely induces high policy instability and discourages high quality candidates from running for political office. Both high policy instability and low quality of political elites can threaten economic and social stability, and ultimately endanger the prospects for enduring democracy and economic growth. Unstable societies pose threats to international security and trade, including the interests of the United States. Learning how to better anticipate such sources of instability can better inform both foreign policy decisions and anti-corruption programs.