Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30 - September 3, 2000, Washington, DC.
Abstract
We examine the effect of corruption on attitudes toward government in contemporary democracies. Based on data collected in 15 democracies in 1996, we hypothesize and demonstrate empirically that living in a country with higher levels of corruption leads to lower levels of support for the political system. Moreover, we show that the negative effect of corruption on political support is attenuated among respondents who have a stake in the maintenance of the system. Specifically, corruption has less of a negative impact on system support among those who are of high socio-economic status and who support the incumbent political authorities.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by NSF grant SES-9818525 to Chris Anderson. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 2000. We are grateful to Silvia Mendes for help with the data. The survey data are available as ICPSR Study No.2808. The original collector of the data, ICPSR, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for uses of this collection or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Address all correspondence to : Center on Democratic Performance (CDP), Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, SUNY, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. E-mail: cdp@binghamton.edu