Table 1 Corruption has little impact on going to vote

of advising people how to get a service they are entitled to by following instructions posted on an offcial website. MPs also like to be helpful in securing collective benefts for their constituency, such as upgrading a road, attracting a private enterprise that brings jobs to their district or securing government action to prevent the closure of a local factory and loss of employment. They may also help a company by providing introductions to policymakers useful for their business in return for a fee.

To take into account the ambiguity of MPs receiving money in exchange for helping individuals and enterprises get what they want, the PBB survey did not use the word bribe when asking about this practice. Immediately after asking about high-ranking offcials taking bribes, it asked: How many Members of Parliament take money from people who want political favours? This phrasing left open whether the payment was for an MP doing something that violated laws. Two-thirds of respondents did not generalize to most politicians media exposure of individual politicians exploiting their offce to make money. Notwithstanding significant differences in the way in which MPs are elected in Britain, france and Spain, there is little difference between countries in the perception of MPs taking money in exchange for favours. About one-third in each country thought most MPs did so (Table 1).

In all societies, there is a distinction between public and private behaviour and a gray area in between. By seeking public offce politicians place themselves in the public eye and the media can, if it chooses, headline private behaviour that is not treated as newsworthy when engaged in by ordinary people. It can publicize as scandalous a politician getting drunk, using drugs or is involved in embarrassing forms of sexual behaviour. The PBB survey asked: How many politicians in their private behaviour over-indulge in drink, sex or drugs? People see most politicians respecting informal social norms in their private behaviour. Just one-sixth of Spaniards saw over-indulgence widespread among politicians and one-quarter of Britons and french.

The most widespread form of bad behaviour is political, misleading voters. To test whether people see their representatives as living up to their mandate from the electorate, the survey asked: How many politicians promise to do one thing if elected and then do the opposite after being elected? Almost three-quarters of Britons view most or all politicians as hypocritical vote-seekers. The proportion is higher still in france, fvesixths, and highest in Spain, where seven out of eight see most politicians

as hypocrites saying one thing to get elected and then breaking their promises once in offce (Table 1). This behaviour violates a key assumption of democratic theory: Citizens should be able to compare the policies that parties offer, vote for the party that comes closest to their own view, and have their representatives fulfl their promises if elected (Schumpeter 1952). If voters cannot rely on the great majority of politicians to do what they say, a change of government does not offer a remedy for corruption; it only results in a rotation of rascals.

Popular perceptions of bad behaviour differ more between activities than between countries. In Britain, there is a difference of 62 percentage points in the perception of MPs misleading voters and hospital administrators taking bribes. The difference rises to 74% in Spain and 75% in france. The median respondent tends to see bad behaviour among some but not most offceholders. Only 11% see all or most offceholders performing badly on all fve measures while only 5% think hardly any behave badly on all counts. Moreover, there is very little cross-national difference in the average perception of bad behaviour: It was 34% in Britain, 37% in france and 38% in Spain (Table 1).

Partisan infuences. Once established, an individual’s party identifcation can infuence subsequent political judgments. People ought to trust the party they vote for and may distrust their opponents. However, its relevance for the assessment of the behaviour of politicians as a class is problematic.

At any given point in time parties can be divided between those that are in government and those that are not. Insofar as the government of the day sets the tone for media reports of the activities of politicians, people who favour the governing party ought to view the behaviour of politicians more positively. At the time of the PBB survey, the governing parties were the Conservatives in Britain, the Socialists in france and the Popular Party in Spain. The chief opposition was Labour in Britain, a mixture of centre-right politicians in france and the Socialists in Spain. In all three countries, the party in government and the chief opposition party have been exchanging their positions with the swing of the electoral pendulum. When parties go in and out of offce, their politicians are insiders and voters for insider parties are likely to be more favourable to judging the behaviour of politicians as a class.

Because outsider parties have never been in government, they are free to protest not only against specifc government policies but also to label parties and politicians that have been inside government as corrupt. In the past decade, a variety of protest parties have become electorally

signifcant in most party systems in Europe. In Spain, Podemos and Ciudadanos won half the vote at the election held at the time of the PBB survey. In france, the National front has the support of up to one-third of the electorate, and left-wing parties bring the total support for the protest category up to half. In Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party won suffcient votes in its own name to create the conditions for a referendum majority leading to the country’s exit from the European Union.

Non-voters are outsiders in a different way: They do not identify with any party, not even a protest party. At a national election, they are offcially defned as the one-quarter to one-third of the electorate who do not turn out to vote. One explanation for non-voters is that they are so disgusted with the behaviour of politicians that they refuse to support either insider or outsider parties. Empirical evidence fnds limited support for this view. Many people who do not vote at a particular election are not habitual non-voters, but are prevented from casting a ballot by illness, travel or other non-political reasons and may even identify with a political party. Other non-voters are people without any interest in politics or the education to understand party policies and may be indifferent to the behaviour of politicians rather than antagonistic.

To a degree, partisanship has a signifcant infuence on evaluations of the behaviour of politicians (Table 2). As hypothesized, people who support the governing party in their country are less likely to think politicians engage in bad behaviour and those who support protest parties or are non-voters are signifcantly more likely to be negative. There is a 25 percentage point gap between the two groups in the extent to which governing parties are seen as saying one thing to win votes and doing the opposite in offce. In Spain the difference is highest: Nine-tenths of both non-voters and protest partisans view politicians as hypocrites. In Britain and france, overwhelming majorities of voters for protest parties are most likely to see politicians as hypocrites and non-voters are almost equally alienated. When the question is about how many politicians take money for favours, supporters of an insider party that is temporarily in opposition are closer to the governing party in evaluating politicians as a class. However, when it comes to politicians keeping promises, opposition supporters are closer to outsider parties in being negative about what politicians do when in offce.

Partisanship similarly infuences the perception of politicians taking money to do favours for constituents. Being a supporter of an Insider party that is for the moment in opposition encourages people to be

Table 2 Partisan infuences on perceptions of politicians

Partisanship Governing party Opposition No party Protest party Difference

Partisanship Governing party Opposition No party Protest party Difference Britain (%) France (%) Spain (%) Mean (%)

Most promise one thing, do another 57 62 69 64 77 87 85 83 81 87 90 86 86 92 90 89 (29) (30) (21) (25)

Most MPs take money for favours 15 23 20 19 31 29 23 28 42 42 39 41 46 49 45 47 (31) (26) (21) (28)

Source Politicians Behaving Badly survey; see Table 1

closer to supporters of the insider party in government than to protest parties. Almost half of the supporters of protest parties think MPs use their offce to receive money in exchange for favours as do two-ffths of non-voters (Table 2). Here too, within-country differences between partisans are greater than differences between countries. The proportion of British Tory voters seeing most MPs as taking money is one-third that of UKIP supporters and half that of Labour Party voters. In france and Spain, voters for the governing party are only half as likely as supporters of protest parties or non-voters to see most politicians taking money for favours.

To confrm that the relation of partisanship to perceptions of politicians’ behaviour is not a spurious correlation, we undertook a logit regression analysis that controlled for the potential infuence of such things as age, gender, education and income on political trust. In all three countries, the contrast between partisans of the governing party and protest parties remained signifcant and substantial (cf. Rose and Wessels 2018). Age was the only signifcant infuence. On average, younger citizens, whatever their party preference or none, are more likely than older people to see politicians as behaving badly, after controlling for types of corruption and partisanship. In the pooled data analysis, younger citizens are 12% more likely than their elders to see politicians breaking promises.