Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies' right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs.
A great amount of research has noted the existence of a gap between election winners and losers in relation to perceptions of electoral fairness and satisfaction with democracy. One aspect of the winner-loser gap that has been overlooked is the impact of citizens' expectations about election outcomes on these attitudes. More precisely, how do citizens react to unexpected defeats and victories? Are individuals on the losing side less critical of the electoral process or dissatisfied with democracy when they recognize beforehand that their favourite party or candidate was likely to be defeated? Does experiencing a surprise victory lead to a boost in perceived electoral integrity or democratic satisfaction? To answer these questions, I use data from the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2012, 2016 and 2020 ANES. While there is little evidence that expectations exert a major influence on post-election attitudes, outcome unexpectedness seems to have decreased confidence in the vote counting process among losers, independents and even winners in the 2020 election. The results show the considerable influence that fraud claims and conspiracy theories can have on public opinion when elected officials and candidates push a consistent story line of electoral malfeasance and corruption in an effort to denigrate political opponents.