The Relationship Between Corruption and Democracy

A general consensus among scholars is that more democratic governments tend to be less corrupt. However, measuring what exactly constitutes a democratic government can make this generalization less clear. Recent scholarship suggests that long-established democracies have less corrupt governments, but consolidating democracies with newly acquired institutions may still experience high levels of corruption due to factors such as political instability. In countries like Kyrgyzstan, Burma, and Egypt, there may be new democratic governments that are still corrupt, but these may not be better than old repressive, autocratic governments that were more stable but still corrupt. Research by Nur-tegin and Czap examined over one hundred countries and found that even politically unstable democracies have public officials who are less corrupt than their counterparts in countries with authoritarian regimes. They suggest that policymakers and aid donors should not sacrifice pursuing more open and democratic developing countries on the fear that new regimes will be more corrupt than old autocratic regimes. Using similar data, Rock looked at several dozen countries and concluded that corruption in a changing government displays an inverted U shape, with respect to democracy, and that government effectiveness and adherence to the rule of law reduce corruption. He also found that durability (length of regime existence) matters, but only in democratic regimes. Authoritarian regimes can control corruption better if they are more durable. The notion that the democracy-reduces corruption relationship is not linear is also supported by Saha, who claims that as countries become more democratic, they tend to actually increase their levels of corruption compared to autocratic countries not democratizing. However, once past a certain democracy threshold point, the corruption level decreases significantly. A U-shaped curve best represents the democratization-corruption relationship, being a curvilinear model rather than a linear model. Kolstad and Wiig tested the impact that perceived corruption has on democracy and the likelihood a country will go to war by focusing on the years 1946-2009 and utilizing Polity and Transparency International datasets and independent variables such as religion, GDP per capita, and history of conflicts. They declare that the effect of democracy on corruption is negative and highly significant, and advocate developing democratic institutions as a strategy to reduce corruption. One counter-argument to the democracy-decreases corruption thesis exists: the increase in elections during democratization, and the election campaigns needed, often requires large amounts of funding, making political parties and candidates more vulnerable and susceptible to pressure from funders. In return, these big corporations, parochial groups, or wealthy individuals may insist that their candidates carry out activities against the public good and even break laws in doing so. In Africa, causes of corruption as they relate to democracy include past political instability, low salaries, insecure and precarious office tenure, personal greed and ambition, as well as weak civil societies that have little ability to observe government officials. Corruption most affects democracy in Africa via electoral fraud, political repression and suppression, decreasing political stability, encouraging military interventions in the political process, and delaying economic development and taking scarce resources away from much-needed socioeconomic growth. Taking a cultural approach and employing the World Values Survey from 1995-2001, Moreno's application of the index of corruption permissiveness is an attempt to draw generalizable conclusions by using questions addressing specific ethics scenarios. He discovers that all regions show some permissiveness to corrupt practices even if the desire for democracy exists across regions. He suggests that people in East Asian societies are the least likely to justify corruption, followed by Western democracies, and then African societies. Corruption delays or impairs political development because influence based on money, access, and expertise distorts representation. Corruption allows those with more political power to exploit those with less using patronage networks, or bring less empowered citizens into a political process where they are controlled rather than politically represented. Fukuyama opines that democratic accountability is a double-edged sword in that bureaucracies have to be transparent to reduce corruption and also be responsive to the public. Bureaucracies have to be shielded from clientelistic interference and political intrusion that might result from a public's desire to be too vigilant. The expertise and merit of government officials and efficiency must be weighed with the need for oversight of these officials for the best possible governance approach.