Corruption and Electoral Candidates in Central and Eastern Europe

How do political parties respond to increasing levels of perceived corruption? Based on related literature on electoral effects of corruption, we have formulated two competing hypotheses on the impact of corruption on candidate turnover: 1) rejuvenation, under which parties renew their candidate lists in response to corruption, and 2) renomination, under which corruption leads to renomination of old candidates and stagnation of the candidate pool. Our initial analysis used Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index and looked at 200,000 candidates in most elections in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. We found more support for the rejuvenation hypothesis, but only among governing parties. In this paper we take a more qualitative look at selected parties and candidates and also assess the usefulness of alternative measures of corruption.