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Abstract:
This paper explores why the top reported fear among Americans is corrupt government officials. First, we establish the stability and magnitude of this public mood and demonstrate the limited ability of standard demographic and political characteristics to explain it. Then we present two additional analyses,allowing us to test five propositions explaining public fear of corruption: partisan bias, self-interested political actors, interest group. influence over the policy process, a government that failing to do what is best for the public, and a lack of democratic responsiveness. Using a new module from the Chapman Survey of American Fears and a factorial vignette survey experiment, we find support for all five propositions, suggesting the American public holds an expansive definition of corruption and that this has profound implications for the legitimacy of government and American politics.

Bio:
Steven Pfaff is Professor of Sociology and a Research Associate in the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics and Society (IRES) at Chapman University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and holds Master’s degrees in both Sociology and European History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He previously served as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington.

His academic work is situated within historical and comparative sociology, with a focus on collective action, religion, and politics. Professor Pfaff has authored several monographs, including The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance and Mutiny in the Age of Sail (Cambridge University Press 2020), which received the 2021 Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award from the Social Science History Association (SSHA). His earlier monograph, Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany (Duke University Press 2006), was the winner of the SSHA President’s Book Award and the European Academy for Sociology Prize. He also co-authored The Spiritual Virtuoso (2017).

Professor Pfaff served as an Associate Editor for the American Sociological Review from 2021 to 2023. In 2019, he was elected as a member of the Sociological Research Association. His international experience includes appointments as an Academic Visitor at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and as a Research Fellow at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid. His research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Theory and Society.

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