Dr Petra Schleiter awarded a British Academy Small Grant

Dr Petra Schleiter has been awarded a British Academy Small Grant for ‘Democratic Accountability, Party Systems and Corruption in Democracies around the World.’ The project will run from 15 March 2010 to 14 November 2011.

This project is based on the observation that democracies around the world can bring corrupt politicians to power, even though the average voter considers corruption to be morally wrong, and finds her material welfare reduced by it. Thus electoral competition - often thought to be one of the most potent remedies against political corruption - can fail to have the anticipated effect. Why? This project sees party systems as critical to such failures, and integrates party system features into the comparative analysis of corruption in 129 democracies around the world. The project examines how party system features can enable corruption to spread by giving politicians incentives to offer corrupt politics, creating collective action problems among honest challengers, multiplying the information required by voters to discriminate between corrupt and honest politicians, and reducing the chances of successful challenges to corrupt incumbents. The project thus aims to contribute to better understanding of the conditions that may systematically compromise democratic accountability.

Petra Schleiter is University Lecturer in Politics and Tutorial Fellow in Politics, St Hilda’s College.