Table 2 Corruption increases distrust in government

3 PunishmenT in The courT of PuBLic oPinion

A pragmatic political rule for avoiding punishment is: Don’t do anything in private that you would have to apologize for if exposed to public scrutiny. A cynical variation is the injunction: Whatever you do in private, don’t get caught. When politicians miscalculate and their private actions become open to public evaluation, they can accept or reject the verdict of the court of public opinion. This virtual court issues judgments in the form of media headlines, statements by good governance advocates, public opinion polls and election results. The court of public opinion complements judicial institutions that can only try offcials for activities deemed illegal within the narrow confnes of statute law. By contrast, the institutions that collectively constitute the court of public opinion employ standards that ordinary people are free to use when evaluating the behaviour of their representatives.

Varied forms of punishment. The punishment that the public thinks appropriate for a particular behaviour indicates the importance that people attach to the standard that has been broken. Immediately after asking each question about how many politicians break a particular standard, the PBB survey asked what should happen to a politician who breaks it. Up to fve alternatives were offered ranging from the harshest—going to jail or losing their job—to no punishment is needed. There were also intermediate categories, such as paying a fne or publicly apologizing. Since these punishments are not mutually exclusive people were allowed to endorse the imposition of multiple punishments.

There is overwhelming public agreement that breaking informal standards of behaviour deserves punishment (Table 3). A majority would like to see an offending politician show a sense of shame by making a public apology for what they have done. Politicians differ in how and whether they apologize. They can show sincere signs of regret or wrap their apology in a request for sympathy or self-justifcation and standards have been changing. A half-century ago a British government minister, John Profumo, accepted his shame after he was exposed as having lied to the House of Commons about a sexual affair. Profumo not only apologized for doing so but also resigned as an MP and undertook a long career as a volunteer social worker among the poor of London. After Bill Clinton’s public admission of sexual misbehaviour with an intern in the White House Oval Offce in the late 1990s, he concluded his nominal apology with an attack on the partisan motives of those who had exposed

Table 3 Punishments for bad behaviour

Punishment Jail (%) Lose job (%) Fine (%) Apologise (%) Nothing (%) Standard broken Bribe for big contract 62 76 68 63 0.1 Takes money for favours 54 83 75 59 0.1 Bribe to jump hospital 27 60 63 60 0.6 queue Over-indulgence 15 58 n.a. 55 30 (Average of replies for Britain, France, Spain)

Source Multiple answers allowed. Politicians Behaving Badly survey; see Table 1

his persistent lying about the issue. Even more striking was the behaviour of Donald Trump during the 2016 American presidential campaign. When his views and behaviour towards women were revealed, he point blank refused to apologise for his actions.

Even though making an apology is considered necessary, it is not deemed suffcient to deal with the violation of public standards. Where money is involved, a fne is thought appropriate by up to three-quarters of the public. However, unlike the treatment of a motorist who has violated a speeding law, a fne is not thought enough of a punishment for politicians who offend against standards of public behaviour (Table 3). Up to three-quarters of Europeans think that high-ranking public offcials who take a bribe should lose their job, and three-ffths think this punishment is also appropriate for hospital administrators. A majority also favour sending to jail offcials who take big bribes from businesses. However, a different view is taken of hospital administrators: Only one-quarter think jail is appropriate. This suggests that most people see mitigating circumstances in a hospital offcial accepting a bribe to help a person get an operation sooner by jumping a queue.

When an MP is exposed for taking money in exchange for favours, big majorities favour harsh punishment rather than the soft option of making a public apology in Parliament. five-sixths think that such politicians ought to lose their position and a majority also favour a jail sentence. There is no substantial cross-national difference about being tough in punishing politicians who are using their public offce for their private gain.

The public moderates its tough judgments when assessing the behaviour of politicians revealed as over-indulging in sex, drink or drugs, activities they have in common with a signifcant fraction of their electorate. In france 51% said that those who did so had no need to apologize about their private affairs; by contrast, only one in fve took this view in Spain and in Britain. Over-indulgence in private matters can nonetheless be judged as a disqualifcation from holding offce because it shows bad judgment or, if such private behaviour becomes public, as bringing their public offce into disrepute. Altogether, more than half think exposed politicians should lose their job.

Punishing hypocritical politicians in theory and practice. The normative theory of democracy is that citizens can and should hold governors accountable at the ballot box for what they do. If governors do what they promise, they should be rewarded by being re-elected. If they do not, they should be punished by losing votes and offce.

Election campaigns give politicians incentives to make promises to win votes without regard to whether they can deliver what they promise. Moreover, as previous experience and knowledge of government become less important, many successful campaigners enter offce with little knowledge of the obstacles to fulflling their promises. for example, the frst government offce held by David Cameron and by Tony Blair was that of prime minister. few are as cynical as Hungarian Socialist Prime Minister ferenc Gyurcsany, who was secretly recorded explaining the government’s repudiation of its economic promises thus: ‘We have obviously lied throughout the past 18 to 24 months. It was perfectly clear that what we were saying was not true’. Many politicians are fooling themselves about the ease of reform, not least, the presumed ease of rooting out corruption. In Britain, france and Spain, substantial majorities think the government is doing a bad job in fghting corruption.

When asked what they would do if a politician they voted for abandoned their promises after gaining offce, PBB respondents talk tough. from almost two-thirds to four-ffths said that they would vote for someone else in order to punish a representative who had misrepresented what he or she would do. Less than one-ffth of British and french were inclined to continue to vote the same, and in Spain the proportion fell to one in twelve. A limited minority similarly said that

Table 4 Punishments if politicians say one thing, do another

What respondent would do Vote for someone else Not bother to vote Would vote the same Britain France Spain

(Percent endorsing option) 68 64 79 18 20 13 14 16 8

Source Politicians Behaving Badly survey; see Table 1. Don’t knows and don’t vote excluded; 10% of respondents

the experience of being deceived by a politician should turn them into non-voters (Table 4). The replies show that a majority of people endorse the civic norm that elections should reward and punish politicians. However, the replies are about hypothetical behaviour in a survey focussed on corruption.

If people see corruption prevalent in all the major parties, they have two alternatives, not voting or casting their vote on other grounds. Perceptions of political corruption have little or no infuence on whether people vote (see Table 1 in Chapter 7). for example, at the 2010 British general election, which followed in the wake of negative publicity for the expense claims of a majority of MPs, this did not produce a fall in turnout. It was at the average level of the past two decades. The vote for MPs whose expenses had been revealed fell by no more than 2% compared to other MPs in their party (Kavanagh and Cowley 2010: 311–313, 393ff).

Studies of voting behaviour show that people are infuenced by their issue preferences, party loyalties and socio-economic status (fisher et al. 2018). In a system of good governance in which insider candidates meet public standards about how politicians ought to behave, corruption is not an issue. In the words of a staff campaigner for Bill Clinton, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. However, in the 2016 American presidential election, voters were offered a choice between two candidates who repeatedly attacked each other for corrupt behaviour and more voters held negative rather than positive views of both Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton.

A general election is not a ballot on a single issue. Even though corruption is a recognized problem, it is not the only problem that governments face. Managing the economy is a perennial problem and the