Political Corruption and Valence Issues

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to linking the literature on political corruption with that on valence issues. It discusses how the former literature has generally focused on understanding the consequences of political corruption, as well as the reasons for its diffusion in different countries, while discarding (with few exceptions) the reasons that could explain why political actors may have an incentive to campaign (in a stronger or weaker way) on political corruption issues, thereby precluding the possibility of investigating the consequences of that choice. It is argued that looking at political corruption using the framework provided by the valence issues literature helps to fill this gap.