How Worried Should National Parties be About Local Corruption?

Abstract

An important process of decentralization has been taking place in Spain in the last few decades. This has created at least three levels of government: central, regional and local. Recent data on elections show that national parties have lost the voting race at local elections. On the other hand, at the same time as the economic boom in this country in the 2000s, there was also a boom in political corruption at the local level. Using an own-elaborated database, including municipal data from 2003-2011 in Spain, we try to evaluate whether national parties lose votes at national elections due to the wrongdoing of their local candidates. Moreover, we focus on partisan effects, split analysis in two main political parties in Spain. Our analyses yield two main conclusions: the impact is somewhat reduced, but the sign of results also depends on whether the corruption is on the right wing or the left wing.