Experience Of Corruption Research Articles

Money matters: The role of public sector wages in corruption prevention

AbstractEconomic theory as well as conventional wisdom from corruption‐ridden countries suggest that low wages among public employees lead to corruption, but cross‐sectional empirical research has largely failed to confirm this relationship. In this article, we investigate the relationship between experiences of corruption and wage levels for public sector employees, utilizing both objective and expert survey data, with global coverage. The statistical analysis shows that higher wages, as compared to the average wage in the country, is associated with less corruption. There is also some support, but weaker, for the hypothesis that corruption increases when wages fall below subsistence levels.

Who Benefits from Anti-Corruption Enforcement?

We exploit enforcement actions for violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in non-OECD countries to study the effect of anti-bribery enforcement on unpunished firms. Firms in the same country-industry as the violator experience significant increases in revenue (+6.4%) and asset productivity (+4.2%). This result is driven by foreign-owned business group affiliates and amplified when affiliates are active in government-dependent industries, members of groups with limited corruption experience, and owned by productive parents. Overall, anti-bribery enforcement actions, which also reduce local corruption levels, result in reallocation of economic activity and level a playing field disrupted by corruption.

Demystify False Dilemmas to Speak About Corruption in Health Systems: Different Actors, Different Perspectives, Different Strategies Comment on "We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems".

The call of the editorial of the International Journal of Health Policy and Management regarding the "Need to talk about corruption in health systems" is spot on. However, the perceived difficulties of why this is so should be explored from an actor’s perspective, as they differ for government actors, donors and the research community. In particular, false dilemmas around definition problems should be demystified, including by building systematic bridges between the anti-corruption/integrity and health policy communities of practice. In addition, the focus on corruption in frontline health service delivery generating mainly problems of access to health, needs to be complemented with addressing sophisticated kickback schemes, nepotism, and state capture of legislative and regulatory agencies and processes draining the health systems of large amounts of resources leading to another false dilemma of assumed sector underfunding. In terms of what can be done, comprehensive corruption experience and risk assessments conducted by independent actors, eg, universities, aimed at generating some basic consensus among the different actors of priority areas to be addressed on the basis of a co-responsibility approach could provide the basis for reform. Finally, governments and private sector actors in countries characterized by systemic corruption and clientelistic political systems will not reform themselves without strong and sustained demand from civil society and the media.

Traffic violations and cooperative intentions among drivers: the role of corruption and fairness

ABSTRACT This paper examines traffic violations and cooperative intentions among a sample of commercial vehicle drivers in Ghana. Results showed that personal and vicarious corruption experiences independently increased frequency of self-reported violations of traffic laws. We found no evidence that perceived police fairness influenced self-reported violations of traffic laws. However, perception of fairness correlated with self-reported violation of traffic laws only when it interacted with personal or vicarious corruption experiences. We also found that perceived police fairness significantly increased the likelihood of cooperation with police, lending support to evidence from prior studies. Personal experience of police corruption decreased the likelihood of cooperative intention. Perceived fairness remained relevant for cooperative intention even among drivers who reported personal corruption experience. The implications of these findings are discussed.

부패경험이 인식된 공직부패수준에 미치는 영향의 크기: 확장 역확률 가중치 접근을 이용한 준비모수적 접근을 중심으로

부패경험이 인식된 공직부패수준에 미치는 영향의 크기: 확장 역확률 가중치 접근을 이용한 준비모수적 접근을 중심으로

Citizens, bribery and the propensity to protest

ABSTRACTIt is widely assumed that the more one experiences corruption the more likely one is to want to protest about it. Yet empirical evidence illustrating this is thin on the ground. This paper fills that gap by focusing on the extent to which self-reported experience of bribery affects the willingness to engage in protests against corruption in Africa. We find that the more one experiences bribery the more one is likely to support anti-corruption protests. A further unexpected finding is that the personal experience of corruption also increases the willingness to rely on bribes to solve public administration problems.

Nigeria’s Corruption Score Card

Abstract Corruption in Nigeria is so lucrative that the threat of jail term is not enough to deter perpetrators, and the president’s body language is also worsening the situation. The National Bureau of Statistics has estimated $4.6 billion as the cost of corruption in Nigeria, confirming the country’s worsening Corruption Perceptions Index of the Transparency International. Nigeria’s 2018 CPI ranking became worst-off after scoring 27 out of 100 points, far below the world average of 43, and Sub-Sahara Africa average of 32.02. Given that Transparency International relies on the perception of institutions rather than measuring actual corruption experiences of the citizens, this study is set out to capture the experience of the latter. The study employs a quantitative research methodology based on a sociological questionnaire. The findings reveal robust evidence that corruption reacts to standard economic incentives, as it is tagged as an economic cost of getting the job done. Corruption, therefore, became institutionalized and thus a telling effect on the emerging political culture and behavior. The anticorruption strategy has also been that of media trial and seizure of accused persons’ assets. Hence the effects of anti-corruption policies are often weakening as businessmen, politicians and public officials often find alternate strategies for rent seeking.

The experience and perception of corruption: A comparative study in 34 societies

In this article we show that perceptions of corruption and the experience of bribery are related theoretically and empirically at the individual level, although the magnitude of this association relies on two context variables, country-level corruption and press freedom. For that purpose, we propose a sociological approach to understand how people form “mental images” of corruption beyond (as well as based on) their personal experience of bribery. We test its main implications using a cross-national approach based on ISSP's 2016 Role of Government module and the national-level predictors suggested by our theoretical framework and the specialized literature. Using multilevel models, we find that the generalized perception of corruption is associated with the personal experience of bribery and that this association is stronger in countries where corruption is relatively absent and press freedom is high, i.e., developed countries, and is weaker otherwise, i.e., developing countries.

Feeling like a caiman: Bodily experiences of corruption

When I started exploring water access in Senegal, the goal of my research was to test the legal-rational Weberian paradigm through an ethnography of the everyday experience of the State. In the central region of the country, a team of servants attached to the Water Supervisory Ministry were charged with the maintenance of water access. Citizens mostly depicted these agents as “caimans”: Greedy predators who were always asking for money. Witnessing illegal transactions on the field, yet they did not seem to all belong to the same moral world. Asking the protagonists to explain themselves always led to a dead end. Another type of ethnographic engagement was required. To access the inner life of the corporation, I came to work as an apprentice. Or, more accurately, to make sense of my presence I was offered the role of the apprentice by my informants. When it all began as a way of witnessing illegal transactions, my apprenticeship led me to build trust and feelings. As an apprentice, I became part of the moral economy of a particular group of street-level bureaucrats. Being an apprentice gave me a position where I could not only become a good observer or listener but a decent feeler. Accordingly, this article addresses ethnography not only as a method but as a positionality.

Using public opinion surveys to evaluate corruption in Europe: trends in the corruption items of 21 international survey projects, 1989\u20132017

Many international survey projects contain items on corruption that facilitate comparative analyses of individual-level determinants of perceived and experienced corruption, yet such data remain under-used. To encourage more and better use of the wealth of available survey projects, this article presents a comprehensive review of the largest collection of extant cross-national data suitable for research on corruption in Europe. I examine a total of 1129 items on corruption stemming from 21 international survey projects and their 89 survey waves that cover 45 European countries during the period 1989–2017. Within three decades, the number of corruption items has grown remarkably, rising from just one in 1989 to nearly a hundred in 2017. This article shows the trends: a considerable increase in experiential items; greater differentiation between forms of corruption; a move from items on ‘what government has done’ to items on ‘what ordinary people can do’; and inclusion of items on corruption in private sector. Researchers interested in understanding perceptions and experiences of corruption, as they are shaped by social contexts, are offered an opportunity of exploring the availability of corruption items in international survey projects in a systematic manner in order to analyzed patterns of corruption, its causes and consequences. Concluding part of the paper contains some remarks on the challenges of using survey data on corruption in a comparative framework.

Corruption and citizen participation in local government: Evidence from Latin America

Prior research indicates that corruption hampers economic growth and imposes high social costs. From the perspective of democratic theory, corruption does not just violate the fiduciary obligations with which the public entrusts government officials; it has detrimental effects on the legitimacy of the democratic process as a whole. If citizens view their government as corrupt and dishonest, they become cynical about political life, and as a result, they are less likely to participate in democratic governance. This article examines the effect of corruption—measured through both perception and experience—on citizen participation in local government. Using data from the AmericasBarometer survey on the new democracies in Latin America, we test whether the withdrawal effects registered in terms of participation in elections hold for the participation in city administration. The results show that citizens' willingness to participate in local governance relates positively with their experience of corruption, but not with their perception of corruption.

The effect of the Internet on corruption awareness and corruption incidence in the EU

It is obvious that the Internet connection brings several unquestionable benefits to people and society. However, not all of them can be seen at first sight. This study examines the potential effect of Internet usage on corruption awareness as well as experience with corruption and actual reporting of corruption cases. We conducted mainly IV probit and 2SLS regression based on the data from the Eurobarometer survey. We have found that intensity of Internet usage seems to be a significant factor affecting respondents’ knowledge about where to report the corruption. Internet usage appears to have a positive effect on the accuracy of corruption extent estimation in a country. Moreover, our results strongly suggest that those using the Internet frequently are more likely to report experiences of corruption. In line with this result, promoting of Internet usage and enabling Internet access can be seen as a potential anti-corruption tool. Our findings have several important implications for anti-corruption and bribery policies. Due to the fact that the initial installation cost proves to be the essential problem, the effective strategy should also include the subsidies for Internet access.

The client side of everyday corruption in Central and Eastern Europe: The case of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in Romania

This article provides an in-depth understanding of the corruption experiences of migrant entrepreneurs in transition economies. Drawing from ethnographic research, including 50 qualitative interviews with Chinese migrant entrepreneurs active in wholesale markets, non-governmental organizations, and supervisory agencies in Romania, this article demonstrates that normalization of corruption by migrant entrepreneurs should be understood in the historical context of the wholesale market as a product of post-1989 transition in Central and Eastern Europe. At a social-interactional level, normalization of corruption is revealed through how migrants use decriminalizing language to refer to corruption and perceive corruption as a survival strategy by public officials. Moreover, the legal and outsider status of migrants and their knowledge of the language, rules and laws further determine migrants’ position as clients of ‘on the spot’ corruption.

There’s no corruption like corruption: perception and experience in relation to political participation

Corruption is a very frequent term in scientific literature. While negative corruption generally affects the economic development of the country or market and impacts people’s trust in individuals and institutions, the relationship between corruption and political participation remains unclear. On the one hand, there is a theoretical argument that corruption discourages political participation and by its nature excludes citizens from the political process. On the other hand, there is a theoretical assertion that, on the contrary, it leads to political participation in which a voter has the opportunity to replace a corrupt politician in the elections. In most cases, research on corruption and political participation is limited to the perception of corruption on the one hand and voter turnout on the other. However, both corruption and political participation can take many forms. The article therefore distinguishes between three forms of corruption and examines their impact not only on participation in elections, but also on political meetings, community meetings and protests. Logistic regression analysis is performed and eight regression models are constructed. The research is focused on two South American countries – Venezuela and Chile. Due to the case selection, the article uses data on an individual level from the Latin American Public Opinion Project. The conclusions are that while the perception of corruption discourages political participation in both countries, experience of corruption in Venezuela, a country in which every fifth citizen encounters bribery, on the contrary leads to political mobilization. This contra sts with Chile, where this variable was not statistically significant at all.

Perception vs. Experience: Explaining Differences in Corruption Measures Using Microdata

Understanding corruption is at the heart of treating the dysfunctionality of many countries’ public sectors. Yet, most corruption research suffers from one common problem: There is no “objective” measure of public-sector corruption for a cross-section of countries. Most studies on the determinants or the effects of corruption rely on indicators of corruption perception. In recent years, a second type of indicator reflecting stated experiences with bribery has become available. If corruption perception is primarily informed by experience with corruption, these two types of indicators should be very highly correlated. In fact, they are not. This paper deals with the divergence between these two types of corruption indicators. We examine the variation in individual corruption perception that cannot be explained by individual corruption experience alone. We find that both respondent characteristics and country characteristics affect corruption perception beyond what can be explained by individuals’ first-hand experience of corruption. Some of these biases may force us to reevaluate results of corruption research that is based on perception data, as well as the anti-corruption policies designed after these results.

Corruption in Russian society as a specific form of social interaction

It is considered the phenomenon of corruption in modern Russian society, the causes and basis of its existence in this article. It was concluded that the key to the institutionalization of corruption in Russian society are the processes of legitimization and ritualization of corruption practices based on the results of our research. The corruption becomes one of the negative factors in regulating social relationships in contemporary Russian society due to this practice. The corruption experience and corruption culture of the population were showed in this article. There are the assessments and attitudes towards corruption, its manifestations in the mass consciousness of the population in this article. We identified the spheres where that phenomenon is more intensively. Also we determined the specific of the manifestation of corruption in the national subjects of the Russian state. The authors concluded that corruption is most clearly manifested in the situation of degradation of the value-normative space.

Can the poor fight back? A multilevel analysis of corruption, poverty and collective demand for accountability in Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the effects of the perceptions of corruption and personal experience of bribery on the propensity for ordinary Africans to support collective action-based anti-corruption tactics. It also evaluates how poverty shapes the association between corruption and support for collective civic action against corruption. The paper bases its findings on the multilevel level regression analysis of public opinion data from 35 African countries. The results show that an increase in experience of paying bribes increases poor people’s preference for anti-corruption tactics based on collective action. Furthermore, individuals who perceive corruption to be widespread are significantly more likely to support collective action as their country’s poverty level rises. These findings strongly challenge the view recently expressed in some of the literature that high levels of corruption erode the willingness of especially poor Africans to bring corruption under control.

How does petty corruption affect tax morale in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Revenues from taxation gain in importance to finance economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. One obstacle to enhancing the willingness to remit taxes can be the extortion of bribes by public officials. Using micro-level data from the Afrobarometer, we show that petty corruption erodes tax morale. The effect on tax morale is more severe in countries and regions where fewer people are affected by petty corruption and becomes insignificant if extortion of bribes is particularly prevalent. Differing levels of civic participation and potential access to tax funded services are also found to induce heterogeneous reactions to corruption experience. Applying a mediation analysis, we demonstrate that petty corruption not only has a direct effect on tax morale but also diminishes confidence in tax authorities and therefore affects tax morale indirectly. The harmful effects of corruption experience, however, operate mainly through a generally lowered inclination to uphold high levels of tax morale.

Corruption on the Road: a Test of Commercial Drivers’ Encounters with Police Extortion in Lagos Metropolis

Over the past three decades, the public outcry over the incidence of police corruption in Nigeria has increased despite concerted efforts to reform the police and improve their service delivery. Of recent, the public resentment of police involvement in street corruption, abuse of crime suspects, and extra-judicial killings has caught the attention of the international community and led to human rights groups’ agitation for the overhauling of the police particularly the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). This study was conducted to investigate the experience of police corruption, specifically extortion and victimization, among commercial drivers in Lagos metropolis. The study sought to know whether the nature of service rendered by the commercial drivers and their level of education are associated with police extortion and victimization. It also investigated other possible predictors of exposure to police extortion. The study was carried out among taxi drivers, commercial bus drivers, motorcyclists, and tricyclists in Ikeja, Mushin, and Somolu local government areas of the state. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design and mixed method of data collection. Multi-stage sampling and convenience sampling techniques were adopted. A sample size of 300 was chosen. Structured questionnaire, observation, and in-depth interview guide were used to gather data from participants. It was found that the nature of service rendered by the commercial drivers were associated with both experience of victimization (χ2 13.229; p = 0.004) and police extortion (χ2 = 9.630; p = 0.022), while the level of education was not significant. Ethnicity and encounter with police were other significant predictors of exposure to police extortion.

Higher Education and Corruption: Macedonian Alumni Experiences

Corruption (lat. corruptio, corrumpere, pervert) means dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery. The most general meaning of corruption, as systematic phenomena (Dinkovski, 20012: 12), is impurity, infection, or decay. It is abuse of public power for personal interests that distort the social institutions. This destructive phenomenon is very present in the Balkan countries. Some 50 % of the population of the Western Balkan believe that corruption practices occur often or very often in a number of public institutions (from central and local government, parliament, hospitals, judiciary and the police). One in six citizens of the Western Balkans citizens had either direct or indirect exposure to a bribery experience with a public official. (Bisogno, 2010: 9, 15) This research is done in 2012 and includes interviews with 25 alumni from different universities in Macedonia, treating the abovementioned issue from clients’, i.e. student’s perspective, based on the experience of corruption during the years of studies. From the analytical approach we concluded that other forms of corruption (favoritism, book buying, sexual services) are more present than bribery or direct payment in our universities, that reporting corruption cases is not occurring from revenge fear and that all student declare that corruption damages education and their future prospect.