Corruption and Democracy

Michael Rock

Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs

Abstract: What is the impact of democracy on corruption? In most models, analysts assume a negative relationship, with more democracy leading to less corruption. But recent theoretical developments and case evidence support an inverted U relationship between corruption and democracy. By drawing on a panel data set covering a large number of countries between 1996 and 2003, substantial empirical support is found for an inverted U relationship between democracy and corruption. The turning point in corruption occurs rather early in the life of new democracies and at rather low per capita incomes.

Keywords: corruption; electoral democracy; consolidated democracy; rule of law; government effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H11 H77 K42 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-law, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp55_2007.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:une:wpaper:55

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aimee Gao ().