Corruption, ideology, and populism : the rise of valence political campaigning

"This book investigates the ideological conditions inducing political actors to highlight corruption issues through valence campaigns. Using case studies and comparative analyses of party programmes, legislatives speeches and social media data, the author demonstrates that the more parties and/or candidates present a similar policy programme, the more they rely on valence campaigns. In other words, as the ideologies of parties have become increasingly similar over recent decades, the content of political competition has substantially shifted from policy to non-policy factors, such as corruption issues. These dynamics, and the ideological considerations underpinning them, also provide a novel perspective on recent phenomena in contemporary democracies, such as the growth of negative campaigning, as well as populist strategies based on anti-elite rhetoric. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in political corruption, valence politics, populism and electoral campaigning" (ed.) Contents 5 List of Figures 6 List of Tables 9 Introduction 11 Chapter 1: Political Corruption and Valence Issues 16 1.1 The Growing Interest in Corruption 17 1.2 Politicizing Corruption 21 1.3 What Is Meant by ‘Valence Issues’? 27 Notes 36 References 38 Chapter 2: The Ideological Incentive for Campaigning on Corruption Issues: The Two-Party Case 44 2.1 A Spatial Model with Two Parties 45 2.2 One Hundred Years of Political Corruption Emphasis in the United States 55 2.3 Japan, Italy and the Negative Campaign on Political Corruption 60 2.4 Political Corruption in Italian Legislative Speeches and the Clean Hands Case 68 Notes 76 Appendix 1: Quadratic vs. Linear Utility Loss 79 Appendix 2: Policy vs. Valence Weight 82 Note 83 Appendix 3: Extracting Party Left-Right Scores from CMP Dataset 83 Notes 87 References 87 Chapter 3: The Ideological Incentive to Campaign on Corruption Issues: The Multi-party Case 96 3.1 One Dimension and Three Parties 97 3.2 Political Corruption in Electoral Programmes: A Comparative Analysis 103 3.3 Moving Beyond Corruption: The Emphasis on Competence in the Italian Case 117 Notes 127 Appendix: Country Fixed Effects and Perceived Corruption 126 Note 127 References 129 Chapter 4: The Direction of Valence Campaigning in Two Dimensions 132 4.1 Ideological Distance and Valence Campaigning in Two Dimensions 133 4.2 The 2014 European Elections’ Case 140 4.3 Dimensions Matter 148 Notes 156 Appendix: List of Parties Considered 154 References 157 Chapter 5: What Implications? 162 5.1 Corruption and Political Accountability 168 5.2 Populist Strategy 176 5.3 Party System Theories 182 Notes 189 Appendix: Postscript on the 2016 US Presidential Campaign 186 Notes 188 References 191 References 197 Index 218 Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Political Corruption and Valence Issues (Luigi Curini)....Pages 1-28 The Ideological Incentive for Campaigning on Corruption Issues: The Two-Party Case (Luigi Curini)....Pages 29-80 The Ideological Incentive to Campaign on Corruption Issues: The Multi-party Case (Luigi Curini)....Pages 81-116 The Direction of Valence Campaigning in Two Dimensions (Luigi Curini)....Pages 117-146 What Implications? (Luigi Curini)....Pages 147-181 Back Matter ....Pages 183-206 Luigi Curini investigates the ideological conditions inducing political actors to highlight corruption issues through valence campaigns. Using case studies and comparative analyses of party programmes, legislatives speeches and social media data, the author demonstrates that the more parties and/or candidates present a similar policy programme, the more they rely on valence campaigns Luigi Curini. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.