by James A. Bacon
As much as it pains me to serve Virginia-bashing fodder to Don the Ripper and PeterG on a platter, I follow the facts and evidence wherever it leads. And the findings from a new paper published by Filipe R. Campante and Quoc-Anh Do, “Isolated Capital Cities, Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from US States,” do not paint a pretty picture of the Old Dominion.
It is the hypothesis of Campante and Do that there is a strong correlation between the geographic isolation of a U.S. state capital and the level of corruption in state government. The authors argue that geographic isolation, as measured by the average log distance of the population to the capital, results in less media oversight, a lower level of voter interest and a greater propensity for bad guys to engage in corrupt practices. They measure corruption as the number of federal convictions for corruption-related crimes relative (1976 to 2002) to the size of the population.
The authors rank the 10 most isolated state capitals and 10 least isolated, using two measures, and Virginia falls into neither basket. Presumably, Richmond lies somewhere between the two extremes regarding geographic isolation. Richmond itself is only the third largest population center in the state. On the other hand, the capital is reasonably centrally located vis a vis the statewide population distribution. Residents of Wise County famously say that they are located closer to seven other state capitals than Richmond… but Wise and other counties in the far southwest comprise only a tiny percentage of the total population.
There are two reasons to be distressed by the graph above, which is taken from the study. First, by my count, 32 other states have a lower per capita-adjusted rate of corruption than Virginia. We’re not up there with Louisiana, New York or Illinois, but we’re not the squeaky-clean place that so many would like to think we are.
Second, adding insult to injury, our corruption level is significantly higher than the level that would be predicted by geographic isolation alone (the brown line). In other words, there are other, unidentified factors at work contributing to Virginia’s corruption. I’m guessing that Don could suggest a few candidates.
The only potentially mitigating aspect of this study that I could find is the fact that the corruption-conviction data are old — more than 10 years old. It is conceivable that conviction rates in Virginia have declined since then. But, then, it is also possible that they have increased.
I would be interested to see the study’s Virginia-related data. Do voter participation rates tends to decline with greater distances from the capital? Do Virginians tend to be less interested in state politics in the larger media centers of Washington and Hampton Roads, where newspapers might have greater resources to identify corrupt dealings? Inquisitive minds would like to know.
