Rather than turn against them, voters often took violence and extortion as perverse signs of strength; a signal that a criminal politician could offer protection or extract resources from the state. ‘Many voters vote for politicians because, rather than in spite, of their criminal reputations,’ Milan Vaishnav wrote in When Crime Pays. Such was the attraction of a criminal background that candidates facing criminal charges were three times more likely to win a seat than those with a clean record.
