E-Government and Corruption: A Cross-Country Survey

Abstract

This article aims to examine the effect of e-Government on corruption. Although e-Government in public administration has been studied in the context of efficiency enhancement, recent research has shed light on the causality between e-Government and corruption. However, the majority of previous studies have focused on one-country or anecdote-based analysis of which the results are not generalizable. Analyzing country-level data, this article attempts to provide a basis for a broader generalization regarding the impact of e-Government on corruption. Through controlling traditional causes of corruption such as the level of economic development, the size of government, and the degree of government regulation, the results of the empirical analysis of this article show that e-Government has a positive influence on corruption reduction. Considering that the notion of e-Government is broad in terms of areas and ranges, this article breaks down e-Government into the three components of telecommunication infrastructure, online participation, and online services. These three components are connected conceptually with ICT infrastructure, and transparency, accountability and empowerment driven by e-Government. Empirical results confirm that these three e-Government dimensions have a statistically significant influence on corruption. Findings suggest that e-Government can be regarded as a pragmatic anti-corruption strategy in the sense that most governments are eager to adopt e-Government systems.

Virtual Versus Physical Government Decentralization: Effects on Corruption and the Shadow Economy

“…Tying back to the theoretical section, the negative coefficient on EGOV implies that the effect of virtual decentralization on bribery or corruption is negative. This effect of EGOV is consistent with other findings in the literature with other corruption measures and/or sample of nations (see Andersen ; Choi ; Kim ). Remarkably, the elasticity of corruption with respect to EGOV is similar in magnitude to the elasticity of shadow economy with respect to e‐government (−0.9 in both cases).…”

“…Furthermore, we perform quantile regression analysis (Table ) to show that the existing prevalence of corruption and the shadow economy matter in determining the effectiveness of decentralization. In the context of the literature, the effectiveness of (physical) decentralization in some cases can be seen as supporting related findings (see, for example, Dell'Anno and Teobaldelli ); Further, the effectiveness of e‐government in reducing corruption supports earlier findings with a different specification, sample and without consideration of the shadow sectors (Andersen ; see Choi () for a review). These results support our Hypothesis 1 with regard to virtual decentralization, and support Hypothesis 2 regarding differences in the impacts of the type of decentralization.…”

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

“…The effect is significantly strengthened by greater Internet adoption in a country. Similar positive effect of e-government on reducing corruption has recently been further confirmed by the results of several other studies (Choi, 2014;Kim, 2014Kim, , 2015Ionescu, 2015;Zhao &Xu, 2015). Internet adoption and technical skills are mostly seen as complementary to the successful adoption of e-government as effective anti-corruption strategy.…”

Forms of government decentralization and institutional quality: evidence from a large sample of nations

“…This effect of DECENT-VITRUAL is consistent with other findings in the literature with other corruption measures and/or sample of nations (i.e., Andersen 2009, Choi 2014, Kim 2014. Remarkably, the elasticity of corruption with respect to DECENT-VITRUAL is similar in magnitude to the elasticity of the shadow economy with respect to e-government (-0.9 in both cases).…”