Experience Of Corruption Research Articles

Determinants of experiences and perceptions of corruption: A case study of Russian regions

In this article, the main determinants of experiences and perceptions of corruption in the Russian regions are analyzed. The research focuses on evaluating the determinants of corruption among ordinary people and business representatives in three regions of Russia. The main objectives of the research are: to reveal the relationship of individual characteristics and attitudes toward corruption with citizens’ actual experiences and perceptions of corruption; to learn how experiences and perceptions of corruption influence each other. The main conclusion is that the experience of corruption and its perception are interrelated. Those members of both the general public and the business community who perceive the prevalence of corruption to be high report experiencing corrupt practices more often than those who see a lower frequency of corruption. People who justify corruption are more likely to report encountering bribery and other low-level corruption practices. For business corruption, tolerance of corruption shows a significant link with perception of corruption, but not with real experiences of corruption. Social learning theory and victimization theory can explain the interdependence of perceptions and experiences of corruption in the Russian regions. The indicators of both perception and experience of corruption in the research can be used as indirect measures of corruption. Their interrelation in the same survey may also indicate their validity as instruments for measuring corruption.

Measuring corruption: whose perceptions should we rely on? Evidence from Iceland"

The extent of corruption in Iceland is highly contested. International corruption measures indicate a relatively small amount of corruption while domestic public opinion suggest a serious corruption problem. Thus, uncertainty prevails about the actual extent of corruption and whose perceptions to rely on. This problem is relevant for corruption research in general. Perceptions are increasingly used as proxies for the actual levels of corruption in comparative research. But we still do not know enough about the accuracy of these proxies or the criteria they must meet in order to give dependable results. In fact, radical differences exist concerning evaluations of perceptions between those who believe in unbiased learning and those believing perceptual bias to be widespread. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to attempt to gauge which factors may influence how perceptions of corruption are shaped and why differences in corruption perceptions between different groups may be so pronounced. We present findings from original survey data from three parallel surveys – among the "public", experts, and "municipal practitioners" – conducted in Iceland in 2014. Expectations based on the perceptual bias approach are tested, indicating that perceptions may be affected by (1) information factors, (2) direct experience of corruption and (3) emotive factors. The validity of perception measures should be considered with this in mind. Domestic experts are likely to be well informed and avoid perceptual bias to a greater extent than other groups. Our examination of the Icelandic case suggests that the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) tends to underestimate corruption problems in "mature welfare states", such as Iceland, whilst the general public tends to overestimate it.

University students’ accounts of police use of force: implications for trust in the police

ABSTRACT This empirical research explores the effect of police use of excessive force on university students’ trust in the police. Although the use of force by the police has continued to resonate in academic discourse, particularly from developed Western societies, the challenge is that there is a dearth of empirical research that precisely measures police use of excessive force among university students and how it shapes their trust in the police. The few existing studies were drawn from the general population survey, and they showed that the police in most African transitional societies tend to misuse their powers and are typically unaccountable to the public. From a survey data of participants delineated to a large public university in South Africa, this study specifically assessed the effect of direct experience of police abuse, vicarious experience of police abuse, experience of police corruption, and predatory policing on university students’ trust in the police. Findings confirmed, among others, that police use of excessive force (direct and vicarious experience of police abuse and predatory policing) significantly negatively affects students’ trust in the South African Police Service (SAPS). The implications of the findings for effective policing in the country are discussed.

The Subnational Corruption Database: Grand and petty corruption in 1,473 regions of 178 countries, 1995–2022

This data descriptor presents the Subnational Corruption Database (SCD), which provides data on corruption in 1,473 subnational areas of 178 countries. The SCD includes a comprehensive overall corruption index, the Subnational Corruption Index (SCI), and its two components: the Subnational Grand Corruption Index (SGCI) and Subnational Petty Corruption Index (SPCI). The SCD is constructed by combining data of 807 surveys held in the period 1995–2022 and includes the corruption experiences and perceptions of 1,326,656 respondents along 19 separate dimensions. The data are available for multiple years, allowing longitudinal analyses. At the national level, the SCI correlates strongly with established corruption indices, like the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the World Bank Control of Corruption Index (CCI). We create subnational estimates of the CPI and CCI by superimposing the subnational variation of the SCI around the national averages of these indices. The presentation of subnational data in the SCD and the separation between grand and petty corruption significantly broaden the global knowledge base in the field of corruption.

Corruption spills over on citizens: The case of self‐reported motivation to cheat on tax

AbstractCorruption poses a significant threat to societies’ social and economic fabric, eroding trust and contractual relationships between governments and citizens. This study investigates the repercussions of corruption spillover on individuals and explores how they adjust their motivation to engage in tax cheating by exploiting two distinct types of corruption heterogeneities at both individual and national levels. Leveraging newly collected individual corruption experiences locally from the World Value Survey alongside national‐level corruption data from Transparency International, we employ multilevel hierarchical modeling to estimate the effects of corruption on individual tax behavior. Our findings reveal that corruption negatively impacts people's willingness to comply with tax laws, with individuals who have personally experienced corruption exhibiting a more pronounced erosion of tax morale compared to those who have not. By shedding light on the intricate dynamics of corruption's influence on tax compliance, this paper contributes to our understanding of the broader implications of corruption for people and society. This paper can also inform policymakers and stakeholders in designing targeted interventions to mitigate the adverse consequences of corruption and restore citizens’ trust in their government.

Corruption can cause healthcare deprivation: Evidence from 29 sub-Saharan African countries

The WHO estimates that nearly half of the world’s population lacks access to essential healthcare, and that the proportion of the population with catastrophic out-of-pocket health spending (10% or more of the household budget) is on the rise. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ General Assembly has recently identified corruption as a vital factor undermining efforts to accomplish universal health coverage. We examine how corruption may lead to healthcare deprivation in the context of 29 sub-Saharan African countries, employing the fifth, sixth and seventh waves of the Afrobarometer survey spanning 2011–2018. Applying an instrumental variable framework, we find that the experience of corruption in the form of bribe payments as well as the frequency of bribe payments within the healthcare sector increases the likelihood of healthcare deprivation. Moreover, corruption experienced in other sectors, such as education, the police, public utilities and identification authorities, have spill-over effects affecting healthcare deprivation adversely. Further analysis reveals that the experience of corruption in multiple sectors simultaneously worsens healthcare deprivation. Our findings suggest that mitigating corruption in the healthcare sector alone may not be sufficient to end the adverse effect of corruption on effective healthcare access in SSA countries. Finally, through mediation analysis, we show that loss of income and loss of trust are two channels through which corruption influences healthcare deprivation.

Corruption experience does not make voters harsher towards the corrupt incumbents – evidence from a survey experiment in Poland

ABSTRACT This study investigates the linkage between the experience of petty corruption and a more harsh stance on corruption scandals. A randomised vignette experiment in Poland tests how people tend to condone corruption. There are substantial mitigating effects of the arguments based on the implicit exchange and lack of credible information and no effect for the argument based on the lack of clean alternatives. Yet, people directly exposed to petty corruption were not less sensitive to any of the justifications. Thus, the linkage between the experience of corruption and more punitive attitudes towards corrupt officials may not work as expected.

Corruption and Firm Growth: Evidence from around the World

Abstract We empirically investigate the relationship between corruption and growth using a firm-level dataset that is unique in scale, covering almost 88,000 firms across 141 economies in 2006–20, with wide-ranging corruption experiences. The scale and detail of our data allow us to explore the corruption-growth relationship at a very local level, within industries in a relatively narrow geography. We report three empirical regularities. First, firms that make zero informal payments tend to grow slower than bribers. Second, this result is driven by non-bribers in high-corruption countries. Third, among bribers, growth is decreasing in the amount of informal payments—in both high- and low-corruption countries. We suggest that this set of results may be reconciled with a simple model in which endogenously determined higher bribe rates lead to lower growth, while non-bribers are often excluded entirely from growth opportunities in high-corruption settings.

Drivers’ Experiences of Traffic Police Corruption and Their Compliance with Traffic Laws in Lahore City

This paper examines drivers’ perceived traffic police corruption and its impact on their compliance with traffic laws in the capital city of province Punjab i.e. Lahore. For this purpose quantitative methodology was employed and cross-sectional survey was conducted on 400 driver participants recruited through simple random sampling. Questionnaire was used as a tool of data collection and regression analysis was done in order to assess the impact of independent variables on dependent variable. Results show that personal and vicarious corruption experiences decreased the drivers’ likelihood to comply with traffic laws. Moreover, it was found that the drivers’ personal and vicarious corruption experiences in Lahore city were less that still affect their level of compliance with traffic laws. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Petty corruption experiences and xenophobic violence in South Africa

ABSTRACT Past studies have shown that corruption can promote conflict and instability. However, the capacity for corruption to influence anti-immigrant violence has received little academic attention. This article examines the relationship between experiences of petty corruption and public participation in violent xenophobic behaviour. It draws on Moral Foundations Theory to argue that corruption experiences undermine the moral inhibitors that prevent an individual from engaging in violence. The study focused on South Africa (where xenophobic violence seems to have accelerated during the last two decades) and used data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey. It found a robust association between the frequency of petty corruption experience and participation (past and intentional) in xenophobic violence. This finding holds even when controlling for variables that capture anti-immigrant sentiment, material deprivation and socio-political mobilisation. The article concludes by arguing that reducing xenophobic violence in South Africa will require strengthening efforts to decrease petty corruption.

Corruption and Trust

Abstract Corruption and trust contrast one another. While corruption is selfish behavior manifested by the abuse of power for private purposes, trust expresses the human belief that other people are a part of their moral community and behave as they should. A number of studies have been written on the relationship between corruption and trust. This review article theoretically explains the effect of corruption on trust, takes into account other variables that may enter into this relationship, and summarizes the results to date in this area. Attention is also placed on what data individual studies used and what their weaknesses may be. The contribution of this article is that it distinguishes between perceptions and experiences of corruption and between interpersonal and political trust. Finally, this article suggests possible directions for further research.

Deontological and Consequentialist Ethics and Attitudes Towards Corruption: A Survey Data Analysis

Much of the empirical research on corruption for the past 45 years has focused on perception-based definitions and measurements. Citizens’ perceptions, their attitudes and (self)reported experiences of corruption have been widely studied through different perception-based measures obtained in surveys, interviews, and experiments applied to citizens in general, and experts, business leaders, politicians, or public officials. Notwithstanding the significant progress made to understand the complexity of citizens’ understandings, judgements and practices, we are still unable to decipher by what criteria they establish what is or is not corruption and what types of corruption are susceptible of being condemned/tolerated. This paper makes an innovative contribution to fill this gap. We propose a methodological design to identify and measure different perception-based definitions of corruption based on two contrasting normative perspectives: deontological and consequentialist ethics. We identified four groups: the Virtuous; the Intransigent; the Pragmatic; and the Hypocrite. Using survey data from a national sample of Portuguese citizens, we employ discriminant analysis and logistic regression models to differentiate individual profiles in terms of process- and outcome-based social definitions of corruption and explore the explanatory factors that account for these different conceptualisations and their different degree of tolerance towards corruption.

Definition and Measurement of Corruption in the States of the European Union and the Use of Directions for Assessing Corruption Actions in Ukraine

The article reveals issues related to corruption, which has a negative impact on social security, public spending, budget deficit, tax collection, vulnerable employment, gender equality and the use of EU funds, and approaches to its measurement. It is noted that corruption is associated with an increase in the level of organized crime, a weakening of the rule of law, a decrease in voter turnout in parliamentary elections and trust in state institutions. It is noted that the pandemic and subsequent socio-economic crises called into question the adequacy of the existing mechanisms for controlling the unprecedented volume of finances within the framework of the EU recovery plan. In this complex context, legal and policy frameworks as well as EU instruments that assess anti-corruption efforts are important at all times. But at the same time, all EU member states, solving this problem, have different approaches and methods of its grouping and measurement. According to the conducted studies, there are currently no corruption-free zones in the EU, as all member states have touched this problem, albeit to varying degrees. The concept of corruption is defined as a broader socio-economic problem that covers a number of issues, namely: conflict of interests; clientelism; various forms of favoritism; influence peddling and other similar forms of behavior. A study of modern statistics of corruption offenses as of the first half of 2023 was conducted, which shows positive developments in Ukraine in the fight against corruption, but at the same time, the rate of violations of financial control requirements remains extremely high. Given the difficulty of directly measuring corruption, various (indirect) indicators have been developed based on the perception or experience of this phenomenon and an attempt to quantify the cost of corruption in the EU. It is noted that the main international study is the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), which collects data on the experience and perception of corruption around the world since 2003. In 2021, the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) – EU focused on measurements in EU Member States, which confirmed the widespread perception of corruption in Europe and showed that EU citizens are concerned about the close ties between business and politics. Therefore, in the article, the author examines issues related to the measurement of corruption for the possibility of more accurately forecasting the development of this negative phenomenon in the future and taking appropriate preventive measures.

Who reduces political trust after experiencing corruption? Introducing the role of personality traits

This article examines the interplay between corruption, personality traits and political trust. It argues that individuals’ personality traits may condition the effect of corruption experience on trust and that these traits also affect how individuals are exposed to corrupt experiences. Using data from the AmericasBarometer 2010, the study finds that openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability amplify the negative effect of corruption on trust in the police. However, only extraversion amplifies the negative effect of corrupt experiences on trust in government. The study also finds that openness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability are linked to exposure to corruption. The study contributes to the literature by showing that personality affects exposure to corruption and constrains the effect of corruption on political trust.

Corruption's effect on BRICS countries' economic growth: a panel data analysis

PurposeThe theoretical debate of corruption's impact on economic growth remains unsettled, making it an empirical question. This study aims to investigate corruption's effect on BRICS countries' economic growth.Design/methodology/approachA panel dataset on BRICS countries spanning 1996 to 2020 was used. Bias-corrected estimators in small dynamic panels were employed to estimate a growth model as a linear-quadratic function of corruption that accounts for cross-sectional dependence, endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity due to country and time-specific characteristics.FindingsThe results indicate that corruption is detrimental to economic growth in BRICS countries; the quadratic relationship implies corruption is less prevalent in some countries than others. Thus, governments of BRICS countries are encouraged to embark on anti-corruption policies to boost their economic performance.Originality/valueAn important limitation of corruption studies is the difficulty in measuring real corruption experiences due to the secretive nature of corruption and the fact that corruption is known not to leave a paper trail. For the uncertainty of the index estimates, the analysis used a continuous corruption composite score measuring the standard deviation of the extent to which public power is exercised for public gain. Furthermore, estimation and inference are robust to small dynamic panels with a general form of cross-sectional dependence.

THE GENDERED IMPACT OF CORRUPTION: WOMEN AS VICTIMS OF SEXTORTION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Corruption affects people differently due to a range of factors, including gender, context, race, socio-economic status, power relations and vulnerability. Research suggests that corruption can affect women more adversely than it does men.1 This is because vulnerable groups are more susceptible to corruption, and women are often more vulnerable than men as they are viewed as easier targets. Furthermore, it follows that more vulnerable women are likely to be more adversely affected by corruption than those that are less vulnerable. The evidence generally shows that the gendered impact of corruption is related to societal gender roles, social inequality and discrimination. Thus, women's disadvantages in many areas of life result in greater vulnerability to corruption compared to men, who enjoy more power and protection, and better access to countervailing strategies. Corruption severely influences the extent to which women's rights are ensured and protected. In cases where women find themselves in a social, political, organisational or cultural context where they are more disempowered relative to men, and they are direct victims of corruption, their experiences of corruption can be more acute, and their avenues to respond to it more limited.2 In this article, the law pertaining to sextortion in South Africa is explored. The authors recommend that women must be brought into the public arena and information about public services be made widely available as this can be critical in reducing the differential impacts of corruption on them.

'Madness' after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina - challenging dominant understandings of distress.

This article reports on the findings from a small-scale co-produced qualitative study on experiences of distress caused by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Inspired by the emerging interdisciplinary field of Mad Studies, the study is novel and unique in two ways. First, it prioritises social understanding and interpretation of madness and distress. Second, an emphasis is placed on experiential knowledge. Beyond interviews with 20 people who experienced distress due to political conflict, this included contextualisation of the study in the knowledge generated through survivor research and within the field of Mad Studies. Study findings highlight the social causes and consequences of distress caused by conflict, such as war-related violence, gender-based violence, experiences of poverty and corruption. Participants stressed the importance of safety and support within their own home, mutual and supportive relationships with their families, friends, other people who experienced distress, the broader community and opportunities to do everyday activities they enjoy. In terms of professional support, the findings suggest that poverty alleviation and protection of people's right to self-determination through access to human rights advocacy and representation may be as relevant as non-coercive community-based services. This indicates that support for distress caused by political conflict need not be different from any other support for people who experience distress. Emphasis should be placed on survivor-run initiatives and non-coercive, community-based support which addresses social causes of distress and enables people to exercise self-determination.

Effects of corruption on foreign direct investment: Evidence from Swedish multinational enterprises

In this paper, we provide novel evidence on the adjustment of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to corrupt environments. We examine if the corruption barrier to entry is reduced by corruption experience (i.e., previous investment in a corrupt system) using a rich enterprise data set on Swedish manufacturers’ activities in the 1997–2015 period. A mixed logit model, which accounts for enterprise-specific market substitution patterns, is used to ensure the accuracy of estimates. Our findings show that a strong deterrent effect of corruption is counteracted by corruption experience, which implies that MNEs learn to adjust to reduce corruption entry costs. Multinational enterprises that acquire corruption experience gain a competitive advantage over other enterprises.

The Political Ramifications of Corruption Experience for Political Trust and Pro-Leadership Voting: Evidence from Russia

Abstract How do citizens’ experiences of corruption affect their political trust and voting behavior? By analyzing a nationally representative survey of Russian citizens conducted a few months after the 2018 presidential election, we find that citizens who engaged in street-level bureaucratic corruption in the preceding two years assess the national leadership as more corrupt and express lower trust in them. This association between corruption engagement and a worsening of people’s views remains even when citizens gained benefits by providing officials with an incentive. We also show that higher perceptions of elite corruption and lower trust in the political leadership are important factors in reducing pro-Kremlin voting. Our findings indicate that even in an authoritarian country citizens’ negative experiences with bureaucracy reduce political support for the national political regime.

Dimensions of size and corruption perceptions versus corruption experiences by firms in emerging economies

Dimensions of size and corruption perceptions versus corruption experiences by firms in emerging economies