Abuse of power

Punishment institutions are a major guarantor of prosocial behavior. At the same time, their asymmetrical power structure may lead to antisocial behavior itself. We investigate power abuse, understood as the use of power for personal gain, of a single punisher in a public-goods game subject to variations in punishment power and contribution transparency. Using a laboratory experiment we find a high amount of abuse across all conditions. More power led to more abuse over time, while transparency could only curb abuse in the high power conditions. These findings highlight the dangers of power centralization but suggest a more complex relation of power and transparency.