Transparency matters: The positive effect of politicians’ side income disclosure on voters’ perceptions

Voters are frustrated by the influence of money in politics. They cannot be certain whether politicians follow the money or the will of the people. Disclosing side income may therefore serve as a means to increase trust in politicians. To investigate whether this mechanism works, we analyze data from a vignette survey experiment on parliamentarians’ side jobs with respondents from seven European countries ( N ≈ 14,100). Our results show that compared to parliamentarians who are unwilling to disclose their side income, transparent parliamentarians, even those with especially high extra-parliamentary earnings, are seen as more trustworthy and electable. We also find that voters rely on the combined information of the number and type of side jobs (companies versus public interest groups) when evaluating non-transparent parliamentarians. Furthermore, voters’ income, education level, and ideological leaning moderate their perceptions of (non-)transparent parliamentarians. Overall, our findings suggest that politicians’ disclosure of side income benefits representative democracy.