Corruption and democratic institutions: a review and synthesis

Abstract

Do democratic elections help reduce corruption? Many reformers-both anti-corruption advocates and democracy promoters-hope and believe the answer is yes. Does the evidence support that view? Social scientists have been investigating this and associated questions for at least a quarter-century, and-as is often the case-the answers they have found are not straightforward. Nonetheless, this research has added significantly to our understanding of the relationship between democracy and corruption. This chapter will summarize and synthesize some of that research, offer some tentative conclusions about the democracy-corruption relationship, and identify some of the most important open questions that could and should be addressed in future research. 1 The chapter is organized as follows. Section I considers how democracies and non-democracies might differ with respect to the extent or type of corruption. This section first reviews the various mechanisms by which democracy might affect corruption, and then provides a brief summary of the existing empirical evidence. Section II turns to how differences in 1

Corruption as Resource Transfer: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis

“…Moreover, this literature was not selected in a systematic fashion but rather in the manner of nonlinear iterative approach by using purposive sampling (Finfgeld‐Connett and Johnson ). The initial choices were identified through the review process of Matthew C. Stephenson's () bibliography on corruption and anticorruption, through discussions with experts, and through background knowledge on the topic. Additional literature was identified from reference lists of the reviewed publications.…”

Grey corruption issues in the public sector

“…The appropriateness of an opportunity-based rational choice perspective is also supported by studies showing how privacy and secrecy in government protect offenders and reduce the capacity of citizens to act against corruption (Djankov et al , 2010; Stephensen, 2015). Rational choice theory in criminology is focussed on would-be offenders’ calculations about rewards and risks and is supported by interviews with offenders and successful intervention studies in which the risks of detection are increased ( Clarke, 1997).…”

“…There is no simple direct relationship between “democracy” and “integrity”, and different forms and stages of democracy appear to reduce or generate different types of corruption (Cain, 2014). For example, new democracies can experience increased corruption resulting from party political competition, while “partial democracies” typically suffer from inadequate accountability mechanisms (Stephensen, 2015, p. 101, 107).…”

Empirical Study of Elite Networks with Wikidata

“…While corruption exists in democracies and autocracies, there is evidence that democratization reduces corruption (Chowdhury, 2004;Kolstad and Wiig, 2016). One reason why this happens is that democracy empowers the public to punish corrupt officials via elections (Stephenson, 2015). The unwillingness of the rich to share the perks of state power with the disenfranchised out of fear of redistribution is an important reason why authoritarian countries resist democratization Robinson, 2012, 2006).…”