Project description
Women politicians’ impact on local corruption scandals
While a quarter of the world’s parliamentarians are women and political corruption is active everywhere, there is little knowledge of women politicians’ impact on corruption-related political decisions. The EU-funded CORNELIA project will explore the impact of women politicians on corruption scandals and the possible diversity in media coverage between women and men politicians involved in scandals or other crimes. The project will focus on Italian local elections between 1993 and 2019 and on United States’ state elections in 52 states between 1976 and 2019 by using a novel data set from administrations. The impact of women politicians on the number of corruption cases will be examined as well as the impact of gender quotas on candidates’ lists. The project will also develop measures of the media coverage of corruption scandals.
Objective
Globally less than a quarter of national parliamentarians are women (UN Women). Meanwhile corruption, in its various forms, persists and Globally less than a quarter of national parliamentarians are women (UN Women). Meanwhile corruption, in its various forms, persists and seems only weakly constrained by democracy. Existing studies evaluate the impact of female politicians on policies decisions and comparison between the decisions of female and male politicians.
Filling the gaps in the literature, CORNELIA (CORruption aNd fEmale poLItical pArticipation) will investigate the impact of female politicians on corruption scandals at municipal level and other crimes and the possible differences in media coverage between female and male politicians involved in these scandals. More specifically, it will investigate the following research questions: 1) examine the impact of female politicians on the amount of corruption and scandals, taking advantage of close mixed gender races in Italy and the US; 2) develop measures of the media coverage of corruption scandals and examine whether coverage differs for female and male politicians in Italy and US, and furthermore whether this coverage ameliorates corruption differently; 3) examine the impact of gender quotas on candidates’ lists on the level of corruption and scandals, taking advantage of the gender quotas introduction/abolition at local level in Italy.
The research question will be answered using a novel dataset for two different developed countries:1) Italian local data from 1993 to 2019 covering local elections and administrations, corruption and new measures describing media coverage of corruption scandals at the local level, developed by the project; 2) US state level data from 1976 to 2019 covering state level elections and administrations for the 52 States, combined with data on female representation in state governments with corruption data and information on the media coverage of state-level corruption scandals.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
YO10 5DD York North Yorkshire
United Kingdom