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

该奖项满足司B，标题五，第。2013年综合和进一步持续拨款法案（P.L.）113-6，2013年3月26日颁布）。 该项目涉及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，了解政治腐败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难题：为什么在许多新民主国家，现任政治家似乎处于不利地位（赢得连任的可能性比被挑战者击败的可能性更小），腐败在这一过程中扮演了什么角色？智力优势：该项目发展并检验了一种理论，该理论认为，在职腐败-滥用职权谋取私利-是这种不利条件的一个重要根源。众所周知，较年轻和较贫穷的民主国家的腐败程度高于成熟的较富裕民主国家。当选民无法确切知道谁是腐败者时，在许多情况下，选民通常会倾向于挑战者而不是现任者。这包括大多数政客是否腐败，潜在腐败的现任者是否罕见但特别贪婪，或者腐败的政客是否能很快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是具有挑战性的，因为腐败很难精确观察和衡量，而且与腐败有关的许多因素-如贫穷或不平等-反而可能是在职不利因素的原因。为了应对这些挑战，该项目依靠广泛的数据来推断罗马尼亚市长选举研究中的现任腐败，包括：（1）超过4，000份公开的资产申报，以发现现任者的异常财富积累;（2）超过100万份当地上市公司的合同，以确定可疑的高价，无竞争力的投标，或有政治联系的获奖者;（3）将基础设施的预算支出与实际实物存量变化数据进行比较，以确定公共资金支出的漏洞;（4）来自10，000多家公司的数据，以揭露共产主义遗留下来的腐败的国有财产私有化。此外，该项目利用了罗马尼亚的一项独特制度：根据法律，一旦城市人口超过一定门槛，市长的工资就会增加。此前的研究表明，更高的薪酬降低了对非法收入的需求，吸引了更多正直的候选人，从而减少了腐败。这条规则允许比较在职（不）优势的城市人口刚刚高于和低于这些工资阈值。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，延伸到腐败）。这一战略保持不变的在职不利的其他潜在原因，并隔离腐败的影响。更广泛的影响：研究在职劣势在一个年轻的民主国家，如罗马尼亚是重要的几个原因。虽然在职不利可能是对腐败的一种可取的反应，但它也可能导致高度的政策不稳定性，并使高素质的候选人不愿竞选政治职位。政策高度不稳定和政治精英素质低下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些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.