Do Clean Government Campaigns Affect Voter Turnout? Corruption Perceptions, Corruption Politicisation and Voter Mobilisation in a Comparative Perspective

This paper tests to what extent voters’ perceptions of corruption affect electoral turnout. In previous research, some studies find that corruption increases turnout because voters either are bought off to participate or because they are mobilized on clean government issues. At the same time, other studies show that corruption decreases turnout because presence of corruption corrodes the political system which leads to general cynicism, distrust and voter apathy. In this paper, we test to what extent the presence of a party politicizing clean government issues in the electoral campaign dampens or even reverses the presumed negative effects of political corruption on turnout. We apply multilevel modeling combining individual-level data and country-level data from the second module of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the Quality of Government Data Set and a unique data set measuring politicization of corruption in European electoral campaigns.