Surveys show that citizens in all parts of the world have a strong distaste for corruption.
At the same time, and contrary to the predictions of democratic theory, politicians
involved in the most glaring abuse of public office often continue to receive electoral
support. Using an original survey experiment conducted in Spain, this paper explores
a previously understudied aspect of this apparent paradox: the importance of viable
and clean political alternatives. The results suggest that voters do punish political
corruption when a clean alternative exists, even when the corrupt candidate is very
appealing in other respects. However, when only given corrupt alternatives, respondents
become much more likely to tolerate a candidate accused of corruption - even when
presented with a convenient ‘no-choice’ option. I discuss how these results can help
us understand corruption voting and why some societies seem to be stuck in a high-corruption
equilibrium.
