Question

Is democratic government more corrupt than Non-Democratic government?​

Answer 1

TertiaryAnti-CorruptionModule 3: Corruption and Comparative PoliticsKey IssuesCorruption and Democracy

E4J University Module Series: Anti-Corruption

Module 3: Corruption and Comparative Politics

Introduction and learning outcomes

Key issues

Types of political systems

Corruption and democracy

Corruption and authoritarian systems

Hybrid systems and syndromes of corruption

The deep democratization approach

Political parties and political finance

Political institution-building as a means to counter corruption

Conclusion

References

Exercises

Possible class structure

Core reading

Advanced reading

Student assessment

Additional teaching tools

Guidelines to develop a stand-alone course

First published in December 2019

This module is a resource for lecturers

Corruption and democracy

Generally speaking, well-established democracies have lower levels of corruption compared to authoritarian regimes or young democracies (Montinola and Jackman, 2002; Warren, 2004). However, if a regime is democratic, this alone does not guarantee a lack of corruption (Kramer, 2018; Kube, 2017; Seldadyo and De Haan, 2011; Uslaner and Rothstein, 2016). For instance, democracies may experience corruption when they lack transparency in political and campaign financing, have outdated laws on freedom of information, provide insufficient protection to whistle-blowers or have unreliable media. Furthermore, corruption - or at least the perception thereof - tends to increase as countries begin to develop democratic processes. As explained by Pring and Vrushi (2019), "countries which recently transitioned to democratic governance often did not develop effective anti-corruption and integrity mechanisms, and now find themselves stuck in a cycle of high corruption and low-performing democratic institutions".

$\bold\color{blue}{hope}$$\bold\color{red}{it}$$\bold\color{green}{will}$$\bold\color{purple}{help}$$\bold\color{orange}{you}$$\bold\color{brown}{friend}$