Getting Rich Too Fast? Voters’ Reactions to Politicians’ Wealth Accumulation

The experiment randomly manipulated a number of relevant characteristics of fictional but realistic candidates, including their wealth accumulation in office. Interviewers then asked a socially, politically and ethnically diverse sample of citizens in Madhepura district (N=1020) to evaluate these politician profiles on several dimensions: how good a representative a politician is, and how likely he is to be corrupt and to resort to violence. This design allowed the research team to measure the respondent’s relative weight given to each candidate attribute, including wealth accumulation. It also allowed the team to explore any interactions between wealth accumulation and the other politician attributes that likely play a role in citizen’s political evaluations, including ethnicity, partisanship and records in office. Finally, it allowed the team to examine possible interactions between a politician’s wealth accumulation and respondent’s important characteristics such as ethnicity and party preference.