Losing Your Grip: Feelings of Control and Unsubstantiated Political Beliefs

Abstract

Widespread corruption has equally widespread impact on the people and functioning of that society. However, while abuses of power may be found in all societies, in many places corruption is far less common and individuals are unlikely to experience it firsthand. In these less-corrupt settings there are nonetheless surprising portions of the populace that believe corruption and related abuses of power to be widespread. Even if unsubstantiated, these perceptions are troubling because they can nonetheless result in serious consequences for individual attitudes and behaviors that have ramifications for the society. Despite this, we still understand relatively little about the roots of these perceptions, particularly in settings where these perceptions are unlikely to be driven by the experience of corruption.

This dissertation suggests that the issues of corruption and electoral misconduct present individuals with a plausible explanation for a host of individual and societal problems they might face, and heightened perceptions of corruption may thus offer those individuals a means to compensate for real or perceived limits to personal control. Theoretically, I draw from and expand upon research that has demonstrated threats to personal control to increase susceptibility to other unsubstantiated beliefs such as conspiracy theories as a compensatory response. I argue that several features found across these kinds of beliefs can make perceptions of corruption and election fraud an effective and potentially low-cost response to limited personal control, with these features also being found in populist rhetoric. However, the compensatory potential offered by these beliefs is conditional upon several societal factors, which are most consistently found in well-functioning democratic societies. I explore this issue in four papers, examining how personal control is related to perceptions of corruption and election fraud, as well as the appeal of populist rhetoric, in well-functioning democratic settings relative to the nature of this relationship in settings where corruption is more widespread.

Across these studies, I find that increasing feelings of limited control are associated with increased perceptions of corruption, greater belief in election fraud, and increased support for parties using populist rhetoric. This association is strongest and most consistently found in the countries that are both least corrupt and perform best on democratic measures. The results highlight areas where further research is needed to better understand the drivers of these perceptions. They also suggest growing challenges that may be posed by ongoing sociopolitical developments.