Local female politicians and their impact on corruption scandals and other crimes

Description du projet

L’impact des femmes politiques sur les scandales liés à la corruption à l’échelle locale

Bien qu’un quart des parlementaires du monde soit des femmes et que la corruption politique soit active partout, l’impact des femmes politiques sur les décisions liées à la corruption reste peu étudié. C’est pourquoi le projet CORNELIA, financé par l’UE, se propose d’examiner l’influence des femmes politiques dans le cadre des affaires de corruption ainsi que les différences potentielles de traitement médiatique entre les femmes et les hommes politiques impliqués dans de tels scandales ou d’autres types de crimes. Utilisant un nouvel ensemble de données provenant des administrations, le projet se concentrera sur les élections locales italiennes entre 1993 et 2019 et sur les élections américaines dans 52 États entre 1976 et 2019. L’impact des femmes politiques sur le nombre de cas de corruption sera examiné, ainsi que l’influence des quotas de genre sur les listes de candidats. Le projet permettra également d’établir des mesures de la couverture médiatique des affaires de corruption.

Objectif

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.