The Effect of Party Turnover on Government Corruption

Abstract

This thesis seeks to investigate how the frequency of executive party turnover impacts the state of corruption within democratic governments. I hypothesize that an intermediate frequency of party turnover will result in the greatest control of corruption. Additionally I expect intermediate party turnover frequencies to optimize voter participation in elections, which would then act as a mechanism to deter corruption. Using cross-national data, I found little support for my first hypothesis. Using the Corruption Perceptions Index and Worldwide Governance Indicators database, there tends to be a negative relationship between party turnover frequency and control of corruption. However, when measuring corruption using the Varieties of Democracy database, the estimated relationship is the opposite of my hypothesis. Alternatively, regression results indicated some support for my second hypothesis, albeit lacking in strong statistical significance.