Winner of the 2024 QoG Best Paper Award

The motivation by the Best Paper Committee reads:

This study raises and addresses an intriguing puzzle: Why do politicians sponsor anti-corruption bills that might be costly for themselves? The author offers a sophisticated and insightful discussion of the competing incentives facing lawmakers—balancing public support for anti-corruption measures with potential backlash from political allies. The study sheds light on how external shocks, electoral motivations, and strategic legislative behavior shape politicians’ decisions to engage in anti-corruption initiatives. The theoretical contributions are both innovative and consequential for understanding the dynamics of political accountability.

Empirically, the paper draws on an original, extensively and carefully curated, dataset covering anti-corruption legislation, political scandals, and legislator characteristics in Mexico. The analysis employs a compelling quasi-random design, motivated and enhanced by qualitative insights from interviews with policymakers and anti-corruption experts. Its findings, that politicians are more likely to sponsor laws after high-profile corruption scandals, when positioned to reap the benefits of doing so, and when the bill is unlikely to become law, provide important new insights into the study of anti-corruption legislation. As such, the paper provides a novel and significant contribution to the study of legislative behavior, corruption, and the Quality of Government at large.

The Best Paper Committee members: 

Frederik Pfeiffer (PhD candidate) 

Jana Schwenk (Post doc) 

Rasmus Broms (Associate Professor)

Stephen Dawson (Post doc)