Political corruption is a critical impediment to the success of transitioning democracies. Persistent corruption jeopardizes economic growth and delays democratic developments. Yet, voters are unwilling to vote out corrupt parties consistently, even while rising in protests and expressing indignation at the pervasiveness of political corruption. In this article, I study electoral backlashes against corruption by examining the link between corruption perceptions among voters and distributive policies incumbent parties use to assuage voter demand for electoral accountability. I present a theory of “corruption compensation”: corrupt incumbents strategically target higher shares of government resources to regions where corruption perceptions are higher and voters can credibly threaten to withdraw their electoral support. Using original, subnational data from Albania, I show that high corruption perceptions reduce incumbent support among voters, but resource provisions mitigate this effect. The findings supplement the electorate-based theories of distributive policies and contribute to an emerging literature on the political economy of distributive politics.
