Abstract
Citizens value competence in politicians. However, while offering high pay is a key strategy when recruiting competent candidates in the job market, most citizens are highly averse to paying politicians higher salaries. We argue that this aversion arises from one fundamental concern among citizens: self-interested politicians. Using data from a large-scale preregistered survey experiment, we show that citizens are affected by the argument that higher salaries may attract self-interested politicians, whereas they are not affected by the argument that higher salaries will attract competent politicians. Surprisingly, the more positively citizens view politicians, the more they are affected by the argument about self-interested politicians. These results suggest that citizens may view modest salaries as a guard against self-interested politicians.
Original language | English |
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Article number | edab034 |
Journal | International Journal of Public Opinion Research |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 1 |
ISSN | 0954-2892 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- competence
- inequality attitudes
- personality
- political elites
- political trust
- warmth
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Replication Data for: Citizens’ Aversion to Pay Raises for Politicians: The Risk of Self-Interest Matter More Than the Promise of Competence
Pedersen, R. T. (Creator), Hansen, K. J. (Creator), Pedersen, L. H. (Creator) & Pedersen, R. T. (Creator), Harvard Dataverse, 23 Feb 2022
DOI: 10.7910/dvn/he3to8, https://dataverse.harvard.edu/citation?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/HE3TO8
Dataset: Supplementary material