Counting the cost of corruption

"The formal electoral process has become a game, behind which the realities of politics are played out in a manner which bears little resemblance to democratic accountability..."

Corruption scandals cost politicians votes, so goes the conventional wisdom. Try telling that to Silvio Berlusconi, a man almost synonymous with scandal, but who emerged as the big winner from last week’s regional elections in Italy. What does that tell us about the electoral impact of corruption? One reading might be that it shows voters don’t really care about accusations of corruption amongst their political leaders. The reputation of the political class is now so low across most European democracies that citizens more or less expect them to be involved in corrupt activities. And over time corruption scandals, like most scandals, lose their capacity to shock: what once generated outrage now elicits indifference. So, although voters may have been disgusted by the recent parliamentary expenses scandals in the UK, they are less likely to have been wholly surprised: for many, it will have represented confirmation of what they already suspected about the behaviour of their representatives.

However, even if citizens do become gradually inured to corruption within the political class, there is another reason why we should remain very concerned about its impact. In the post-communist era, electoral politics in the developed democracies has shifted from ‘selling ideologies’ to ‘selling leaders’. For although voters may increasingly expect their politicians to be corrupt, the political game itself demands a rhetoric of denial. The focus of election campaigns is increasingly on the honesty and trustworthiness of leaders, presented in contrast to the alleged dishonesty of their opponents, rather than on what they actually stand for.

This is doubly damaging for democracy. It reduces electoral competition to little more than a political beauty competition, where voters are being sold a confected ‘package’. Witness the recent focus on the wives of the main party leaders as extensions of their appeal. We are invited to get to ‘know’ our political leaders, as if they were characters in a national level soap opera, leading some commentators to talk of the ‘trivialisation’ of politics. An even more insidious problem is that this undermines comprehension of the real complexities of the political process and the capacity of politicians to effect change. There is an inevitable ratcheting up of increasingly implausible claims about what can be achieved, with political leaders trading promises that are almost bound to fail. That can only add to a sense of cynicism towards the political process as voters are increasingly turned off. In some countries, notably in the former communist world, such trends have opened the way to the emergence of ‘state capture’, whereby firms and other private bodies shape the laws, policies and regulations to their own advantage. The formal electoral process has become a game, behind which the realities of politics are played out in a manner which bears little resemblance to democratic accountability.

For all the recent hoo-ha around the claims by former ministers like Stephen Byers and others, it is highly unlikely that they are really in a position to ‘sell’ policy change to the highest bidder. But, even if their attempts to trumpet their self-importance were little more than bluster, the line between lobbying and improper influence can easily become blurred. So far, in addition to well-established and mainly effective parliamentary procedures, a strong and largely independent media has helped ensure that the UK retains sufficient scrutiny of the political process for it to be difficult to ‘buy’ policy. But there is no room for complacency.

Professor Paul M Heywood

Selling England by the Pound?

The government is understandably furious about the maladroit claims made to undercover reporters by former transport minister, Stephen Byers, that he was ‘a bit like a sort of cab for hire’, able to influence serving ministers for a small matter of £3,000 to £5,000 per day. Alongside similar claims made by his former ministerial colleagues, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, such suggestions of being able to help shape or sway policy decisions in return for private payments strike at the very heart of the accountability upon which the democratic process depends.
Many commentators have pointed out the UK still lacks effective regulation of political lobbying, despite a series of scandals reaching back over many years – from the ‘cash for questions’ scandal of 1994 (when it was claimed that the lobbyist Ian Greer told Mohamed Al-Fayed that ‘you rent an MP like you rent a taxi’) to the ‘Ecclestone’ affair of 1997 (when, supposedly in return for a £1m donation to the Labour Party, later ignominiously returned, Formula One was exempted from a ban on tobacco advertising) and the ‘cash for honours’ investigations of 2006-07 (which explored the alleged link between political donations and life peerages).

The standard interpretation of such scandals is that they undermine public confidence in politicians and the political process. And they do. Evidence from a recent Eurobarometer survey (2009) shows that that a strikingly high proportion of EU citizens (78 per cent average across the EU27) see corruption as a ‘major problem’ in their country. In just three countries (Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark) did fewer than half the respondents agree. The UK figure stood at 74 per cent, with just 22 per cent disagreeing, compared to 65 per cent and 28 per cent respectively just two years earlier – the fourth highest increase in the EU over that period. Those seen as most likely to be corrupt were politicians at national level, followed by officials awarding public tenders and those issuing building permits, then politicians at regional level. The parliamentary expenses scandals appears to have had a clear impact, with the number believing that there is corruption at national level in the UK jumping from 44 per cent in 2007 to 62 per cent in 2009.

In practice, according to the 2009 survey, just 9 per cent of respondents across the EU27 had themselves been directly exposed to any form of corrupt activity over the previous twelve months, and in the UK that figure was just 3 per cent (the second lowest of any country). But impressions about corruption are garnered from news stories of precisely the kind we have seen over the last few days, and from the righteous outrage they give rise to amongst reporters and political commentators.

So there is a very widespread belief that corruption is rife, and it is to be found in particular amongst politicians. Does this really matter? At one level, it could be argued that concern about corruption and its consequences is generally overplayed. The received wisdom is that reports of corrupt behaviour erodes confidence in political institutions and in the political class, leading to citizen disengagement from politics. And yet there is some counter evidence. In many established democracies, the long term decline in voter turnout at elections witnessed since the early 1960s appears to have either slowed or even reversed since around 2000. And in Italy, where corruption has long been seen as virtually the stock-in-trade of the political process, Silvio Berlusconi still enjoys an approval rating of over 40 per cent in spite of being almost permanently mired in scandal and facing street protests involving tens of thousands of citizens. One explanation may be that most Italian voters have already discounted corruption: they are so used to it that it no longer registers as a significant factor in their assessment of the political class. It seems that the greater the number of scandals over time, the less impact they have. We may simply be getting used to the idea of our politicians being involved in shady business; whether it affects how we vote is another question.


Paul M Heywood