Economic, Cultural and Religious Determinants of Perceived Level of Political Corruption

Abstract

Political corruption has received increasing attention in the recent literature as it leads to crises in both industrialized and developing countries. This study examines the level of corruption and for this purpose this study tries to find out the question of what determines political corruption. Foreign aid, the world policy index, GDP per worker, democracy, British colony, religion, women in the parliament, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, and the number of years of schooling are used as explanatory variables. The ordinary least squares (OLS) and a parsimonious specification is used in order to identify the insignificant variables which will be dropped sequentially from the first setup, so as to arrive at a final specification. Yet, the core variables are kept, which were the number of years of democratic government (Durable), and the percentage of population with Protestant religious affiliation (Prot), and enthnolinguistic fractionalization (Etf), from the first specification to the last one and those core variables have a significant effect in determining the perceived level of corruption.