This paper asks whether aid fragmentation—the simultaneous operation of multiple development agencies in one setting—affects opportunities for corruption, and it provides the first microlevel empirical look at that question. Using project-level delivery data from Afghanistan, the authors examine how the number and coordination of donors relate to misappropriation and waste, and test a mechanism connecting the types of projects delivered to leakage.
Citizens often enable corruption by paying bribes, yet even in highly corrupt settings only a minority always pay. This study asks why individuals choose to bribe in some situations but not others by combining insights from two major literatures on corruption.
How does a major corruption scandal shape public support for democratic institutions? This study uses the unexpected timing of Brazil’s historic 2015 corruption revelations to estimate causal effects on system support.
This study examines whether banks adjust willingness to onboard corporate clients based on risk and reward. Competing predictions from expected utility, behavioralist, and institutionalist accounts are evaluated using a global field experiment.
Do problems with government performance change public support for democracy? This study reports results from a 2022 survey experiment of nearly 2,000 residents in Spain that used short writing prompts to make respondents think about two types of poor government performance—corruption or unemployment—and, for corruption, whether it was framed as caused by elites or by the system. The paper examines whether these prompts shift attitudes toward democracy measured both as broad democratic support and as support for specific democratic practices.
A new dataset of disciplinary investigations within the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties is used to compare how authoritarian leaders manage the trade-off between deterring rent-seeking and keeping factional allies loyal. The analysis exploits variation across provinces and factional connections to traced patterns of protection and punishment.
This study investigates whether female politicians face heightened backlash against corruption allegations compared to their male counterparts.
This study asks how punishment of corruption shapes public support under authoritarian rule and tests two mechanisms: that punishment signals government capacity (instrumental) and that it signals moral commitment (deontological). Using an experimental mediation design embedded in a series of conjoint experiments in China, the authors present individual-level evidence about citizens’ evaluations of local officials who punish corrupt subordinates.
Political scientists frequently struggle to judge whether measures are valid and reliable enough for substantive research. Stand-alone assessment tools exist, but they are rarely combined in practice, and guidance aimed at data consumers—those who must decide whether to use existing measures—is limited. This article presents a practical, integrated approach for assessing measure quality and demonstrates it on prominent corruption indicators.
Title: Self-Selection Into Public Service When Corruption is Widespread: The Anomalous Russian Case
This research explores an unexpected relationship: higher educational attainment is linked to increased levels of political corruption in certain contexts.
Sensitive survey techniques (SSTs) are widely used to measure taboo or stigmatized behaviors, but their use often produces highly variable prevalence estimates. Existing SST strategies also leave a crucial question unanswered: is the SST necessary in the first place for a given item?