What Candidates Benefit From Corruption? Opportunities for Corruption and the Prevalence of Candidates With Business Ties
研究选举前公共采购中的腐败风险如何增加有商业关系的候选人比例，以2018年意大利选举为例，发现该效应在北部显著，在腐败系统性的南部则不成立。
ABSTRACT Which candidates benefit from corruption and favoritism in public procurement? While existing studies show that politically connected firms profit from corruption risks in public procurement, we know less about whether these risks also increase the prevalence of political candidates with ties to business. This study suggests that pre‐election corruption risks increase the prevalence of candidates with business ties, but that this relationship is highly contextual. Candidates with business ties have greater opportunities to benefit from favoritism and corruption in public contracting and may use these advantages to bolster their electoral base. However, when corruption reaches systemic levels, increases in pre‐election corruption are less likely to affect the prevalence of candidates with business ties, since such ties are already deeply entrenched and collusive arrangements between business and politics are well established. We develop a new indicator of candidates' involvement in local companies—the Business‐Politics Involvement (BPI) index—and use it to show that increases in pre‐election corruption risks in public procurement are associated with a higher prevalence of candidates with business ties in the 2018 Italian election. Yet we also show that this association is largely driven by provinces in Northern Italy, while there is no such relationship in Southern Italy, where business ties are more common and corruption is systemic. Our findings suggest that contextual nuance is needed when interpreting single‐bid procurement as evidence of corruption—particularly in systemically corrupt settings where pre‐bid collusion is widespread. They also indicate the need for further research to better understand the nexus between business ties and corruption.