Guilty by association: Party effects of corruption-related prosecutions
2025-08-13
Corrupt politicians are expected to be held accountable when they are caught doing wrong, but does prosecuting politicians affect their co-partisans? I leverage variation in criminal corruption charges among Mexican governors after the legislative elections of 2015 to identify their consequences on votes received by legislators in 2018. I find a robust association: legislative candidates in districts of criminal governors received between 3 and 6% less votes than candidates in districts with no criminal governors. These findings suggest that criminal trials affect parties even in places where corruption is pervasive and trust in the judicial process is extremely low. This electoral punishment of co-partisans, which I call ‘guilt by association,’ helps the role that criminalization of corruption can play in enforcing vertical accountability.