Roba Pero Hace? An experimental test of the competence-corruption tradeoff hypothesis in Spain and Sweden

Abstract

From previous research it is known that one of the main mechanisms that limits the ability of elections to be effective in controlling corruption has to do with a sort of implicit exchange of transparency for competence, as summarized by the Latin-American saying ‘roba pero hace’. However, we do not know how this mechanism travels across contexts, and especially whether it also operates in low corruption situations. In this paper we conduct a full factorial 2x2 survey-embedded experiment in which we manipulate ‘competence’ and ‘corruption’ of an incumbent mayoral candidate to estimate the effect of competence on the electoral cost of corruption. We replicate the experiment in a context with low level of corruption (Sweden) and another one with a medium level of prevalence (Spain). Results show clear evidence of such an exchange in both national contexts, and point to a mechanism of dissonance reduction as one of its drivers.