Abstract: this article focuses on the interplay between political corruption and trust, both inter-personal and institutional. A model of corruption and trust is tested based on data from transpar-ency International and the european social survey. the european states which have not been yet considered in this context vary widely in the pervasiveness and level of corruption and, thus, offer an excellent case to study this relationship. Both new and established european democra-cies have experienced episodes of government corruption. using pooled data from 24 european countries multivariate regressions show that lack of interpersonal trust increases perceived politi-cal corruption. Political corruption lowers trust in political institutions. furthermore, twenty years after the collapse of communism, differences between Western and Central and eastern european countries still prevail.
Keywords: Corruption · trust · Democracy
Korruption und Vertrauen – Ein Modellentwurf
Zusammenfassung: Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht das Wechselverhältnis von politischer Korruption und Vertrauen, sowohl auf interpersonaler als auch auf institutioneller ebene. Basie-rend auf Daten von transparency International und dem european social survey wird hierfür ein Modell entworfen und getestet. europäische staaten, die in diesem zusammenhang bislang von der forschung unberücksichtigt blieben, variieren deutlich bezüglich der Verbreitung und dem Grad von Korruption und bieten sich somit für eine Analyse an. Basierend auf gepoolten Daten von 24 europäischen Ländern, zeigen multivariate Regressionsanalysen, dass das fehlen von interpersonalem Vertrauen die wahrgenommene politische Korruption vergrößert, während Korruption wiederum Vertrauen in Institutionen verringert. zudem wird deutlich, dass auch 20 Jahre nach dem zusammenbruch des Kommunismus immer noch unterschiede zwischen west-europäischen sowie mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern herrschen.
I. Kubbe ()Institute for Political science, Leuphana university Lüneburg, scharnhorststr. 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germanye-mail: [email protected]
118 I. Kubbe
1 Introduction
Corruption—the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (tI 2013a)—is a major issue in the international press and in the scientific community. In contrast to the previous practice of secrecy and denial, corruption is a topic which is seriously discussed on the highest political and executive level. As it erupted as a global problem in the 1990s, numerous international organisations reacted with several anti-corruption programs and agreements1 (Collier 2002). However, especially political corruption2 is still a problem which particularly confronts autocratic and transformation systems as well as young and established democracies. the well-known international non-governmental organisation transparency International (tI) regards political corruption as “one of the greatest chal-lenges of the contemporary world. It undermines good government, fundamentally dis-torts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector and private sector development and particularly hurts the poor” (tI 2013b). Corruption vio-lates the fundamental principles of democracy such as equality, transparency, accountabil-ity and fairness and threatens regime stability (Anderson and tverdova 2003; sandholtz and Koetzle 2000; Warren 2006; Chang and Chu 2006). It promotes social inequality, disturbs macroeconomic and fiscal stability, strengthens the underground, erodes the rule of law and harms the reputation of trust in the state. As the World Bank summarises: “In short, it increases wealth for the few at the expense of society as a whole, leaving the poor suffering the harshest consequences” (World Bank 2013).
It is not invariably the case that corruption has only negative consequences,3 how-ever, it is generally agreed that corruption is harmful in many different ways in the long-run. Apart from the economic effects (as Mauro 1995, 1997; Rose-Ackerman 1999),4 the social and political consequences of corruption are increasingly a major aspect of
1 the organisations’ efforts include programs to encourage free and open trade, promote good governance and transparency in government accounting and contracting, improve government ethics, and eliminate the bribery of government officials by foreign businesses seeking contracts (Collier 2002).
2 Philp (2009, p. 42) suggests the following definition of political corruption: “We can recognise political corruption where: (1) a public official (A), (2) in violation of the trust placed in him by the public (B), (3) and in a manner which harms the public interest, (4) knowingly engages in conduct which exploits the office for clear personal and private gain in a way which runs contrary to the accepted rules and standards for the conduct of public office within the political culture, (5) so as to benefit a third party (C) by providing C with access to a good or service C would not otherwise obtain.”
3 some authors argue that in communist societies certain types of corruption were central for the functioning of the system (e.g. Holmes 2000). especially in countries with ineffective mar-ket mechanisms and administrative structures, corruption is essential to avoid regulations and accelerate long bureaucratic procedures. However, this “greasing the wheels” argument is con-tested by numerous researchers (e.g. Méon and sekkat 2005).
4 “Corruption discourages investment, limits economic growth, and alters the composition of government spending, often to the detriment of future economic growth” (Mauro 1997, p. 3–4). Similarly, Rose-Ackermann refers to some studies which verified a negative correlation between corruption and foreign direct investments (Rose-Ackerman 1999). In addition, corruption leads to a higher risk of financial crises (Wei and Wu 2001).
119Corruption and trust: A model design
research (Della Porta 2000; uslaner 2004; Richey 2010). some studies conclude that high degrees of political corruption foster low levels of trust in political institutions and even erode general trust in the whole community (Miller and Listhaug 1999; Mishler and Rose 2001; Anderson and tverdova 2003; Catterberg and Moreno 2005; Richey 2010; Morris and Klesner 2010). this, in turn, may have perilous consequences for the legitimacy of a political system, particularly for young democracies5 (Rose et al. 1998; Rose-Ackerman 1999; tulchin and espach 2000; Montinola and Jackman 2002; seligson 2002; Chang and Chu 2006). However, some authors claim that low levels of, in particular, political trust offer an opportunity for the further development of democracies (e.g. Norris 1999; Welzel 2007). so, Rosanvallon (2008) suggests that citizens are not just voters; they also serve as quality controllers for the political systems. this raises numerous questions con-cerning the relationship between political corruption and trust.
It is important to distinguish between two forms of trust: interpersonal trust6, which means trust in other members of the society, and institutional trust7, which means trust in political institutions, such as the government or political parties (Putnam 19938; Inglehart and Welzel 2005). empirical research shows a correlation linking the levels of two types of trust, which are both a cause and a consequence of corruption. However, the distinc-tion between the two types is not maintained consistently in analysis, which could lead to incorrect conclusions. thus, the question that matters is: is there a kind of model in which political corruption mediates both forms of trust? using a model could help to deal with the problem of corruption.
the european states which have not yet been investigated in this context vary widely according to the levels of trust and corruption. Hence, europe serves as an excellent case to study the trust-corruption relationship.9 New as well as established european democra-cies have experienced episodes of government corruption over the years. It can be noted that the level of political corruption is not much lower in Western democracies than in post-communist societies: countries such as Greece (3.5), Italy (3.9), Portugal (6.0) or spain (6.1), have similarly low ratings on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) as some post-communist countries, such as Romania (3.7), Hungary (4.7), slovenia (6.4) or esto-nia (6.5). Contrariwise, these countries contrast with european states whose CPI is very
5 Rose et al. (1998) claim in their study of Central and eastern europe that high levels of cor-ruption negatively affected support for the democratic system and conversely increased the acceptance for authoritarian alternatives.
6 social or generalised trust are often used as synonyms for interpersonal trust (e.g. Rothstein and stolle 2002; Delhey and Newton 2003; Davis et al. 2004).
7 Political trust is often used as synonym for institutional trust (e.g. Mishler and Rose 2001; Cat-terberg and Moreno 2005; Marien and Hooghe 2011).
8 for Putnam (1993) trust is a habit formed during a centuries-long history of “horizontal net-works of association” between people, covering economic and civic activities. Rose-Ackerman (2001) draws the same conclusion that interpersonal and institutional trust have deep cultural and historical roots. It can be described as path dependency of trust. therefore, good perfor-mances of institution may increase trust between people and in institutions (La Porta et al. 1997).
9 the case selection is not theoretically guided. european countries which are members of the european union and provide useful data are systematically involved in the analysis.
120 I. Kubbe
favourable (for example, Denmark (9.3), sweden (9.2) or the Netherlands (8.8). the rea-sons for this contradictory picture are still not resolved, because there is still relatively little knowledge about the factors which determine the variance of the appearance of corruption and the interaction of various factors in a systematic way. Based on data espe-cially from transparency International and the european social survey (ess), the fol-lowing analysis examines trust both as an antecedent and as a consequence of corruption. the aim is to establish a general model of the causal links between trust and corruption initially at the aggregate level. Furthermore, possible influencing factors are to be anal-ysed. Pooled country data and regression and path analyses are used to test the hypotheses presented in this article.
2 Trust and Corruption
the political science literature offers different theoretical considerations and contradict-ing empirical findings on the relation between different forms of trust and corruption. In 2004 uslaner published an article that intensively investigated these variables and claimed that even if they are opposite poles of the human being, the two are very strongly related. His cross-sectional results show a reciprocal connection between these poles and “that the effect of corruption on trust is greater than the opposite causal claim (trust begets an honest political system)” (uslaner 2004, p. 3).
Corruption is a very selfish and rational behaviour. “Corruption rests on a diametrically opposed view of human nature: We rob because we value creature comforts” (uslaner 2004, p. 4). In contrast, trust as a core element of social capital is a value expressing the belief that others are part of your moral community. Yet, some scholars are more hesitant to inject such a strongly moralistic interpretation into trust. especially from a rational choice point of view (fukuyama 1995; Hardin 2002), trust is simply based on the expec-tation that others behave predictably. trust is about certainty of expectations10 and lays the basis for cooperation with people who are not like oneself (Putnam 1993; uslaner 2004). trusting people are more inclined to have an optimistic view of the world in gen-eral and their own ability to influence their life and they are more satisfied with the way it is (Rose-Ackerman 2001; Helliwell 2003; uslaner 2002; Delhey and Newton 2003).
In contrast to corruption, trust correlates positively with a wide range of normatively highly desirable variables. trust seems to nurture what corruption destroys. At the indi-vidual level, a comparably high level of trust causes individuals to have a positive view of their democratic institutions, to be more involved in business and cultural groups, to be more likely to volunteer in politics and in civic organisations, to make more charitable contributions and to be more tolerant toward minorities (Rose-Ackerman 2001; Rothstein and uslaner 2005). Moreover, people who have faith in others are more likely to recom-mend strong standards of moral and legal behaviour. Also, people who believe that the legal system is fair and impartial are more likely to trust their fellow citizens (Rothstein
10 In fact, taking this perspective offers some of the best arguments why trust should be linked to institutions, especially to institutions committed to impartial law enforcement: these are pre-cisely the institutional features creating certainty of expectation.
121Corruption and trust: A model design
and uslaner 2005). As a result, societies with more trust have better governance, better living conditions, greater economic growth, and more open and efficient market econo-mies. they spend more on redistribution, have greater respect for the law among the citizenry and have less crime and corruption (for example Putnam 199311; Inglehart 1997; zak and Knack 2001; uslaner 2004; Delhey and Newton 2003; Beugelsdijk et al. 2004; Rothstein and uslaner 2005; Richey 2010).
Among the empirical studies which analyse the relationship between corruption and trust, especially Paldam and svendsen (2001), Moreno (2002), uslaner (2004) and You (2005) conclude that a strong negative relationship between corruption and interpersonal trust exists, which means that trusting societies have fewer people behaving corruptly. Moreno, on the other hand, argues that such societies also tend to be more tolerant towards corrupt practices. High levels of interpersonal trust support corruption because trust plays an important role in the relationship between corrupt persons, who usually operate with a high degree of interpersonal trust which is necessary to maintain their relationship12 (Della Porta 2000; Rose-Ackerman 2001). similarly, studies by seligson (1999)13 and Davis et al. (2004) identify interpersonal trust as a significant predictor of individual-level perceptions of corruption in government. Davis et al. (2004) also conclude that those who do not trust their fellow men are more likely to believe that the political system is corrupt.
Richey (2010) considers interpersonal trust as a possible consequence of corruption. His study shows that increased corruption lowers generalised trust. “the panel data struc-ture ensures that this research did not simply find that people in more trustworthy areas have less corruption. the results show that governmental corruption may make the soci-ety seem untrustworthy.” This may help explain how institutional action influences trust. It suggests that people attribute the untrustworthy behaviour of politicians to people gen-erally (Richey 2010, p. 687). Rothstein and uslaner (2005) conclude that greater equality and less corruption lead to more inclusive (universalistic) social welfare programs and to a higher level of generalised trust.
11 for instance, Putnam (1993) argues that the independent city-states of Northern Italy encour-aged the formation of such horizontal networks, in contrast to the more authoritarian political regimes of the South. La Porta et al. confirm this argument and conclude that Italian local gov-ernments perform better in high-trust regions because trust “enables individual bureaucrats to cooperate better with each other and with private citizens, making government more effective” (La Porta et al. 1997, p. 334).
12 “In all illegal systems of exchange, a high degree of trust and reciprocity is necessary among participants, so the internalisation of some rules of the game is therefore necessary. A good repu-tation for respecting the terms of the illegal exchange, which participants often call ‘honesty’, is valued by the actors involved” (Della Porta 2000, p. 223). In opposition to this Rothstein and stolle note that: “the high degree of norm conformity that Della Porta depicts among those who are involved in corruption may be plausible, but this is a specific type of trust relations, that can-not be revealed to the outside world”. they claim that people involved in corruption need not really trust one another. It is rather a situation of “mutual deterrence” (2002, p. 12).
13 Based on polls seligson (1999) clarifies that the Nicaraguans feel corruption threatens the sys-tem’s stability and their basic rights. Consequently, they have less pride in the political system and less trust in other people.
122 I. Kubbe
examining 33 european countries Marien and Hooghe (2011) identify that a lack of institutional trust can be a cause of deviant individual behaviour. their results show that people with low levels of institutional trust are significantly more likely to break the law than people with higher levels.
Other studies clarify the negative influence of political corruption on institutional trust, mainly caused by public scandals. the public has reacted to corruption by losing trust in public officials (Pharr 2000; Catterberg and Moreno 2005; Chang and Chu 2006). In his comparative analysis of Latin American countries seligson (2002) considers corrup-tion to be an important factor minimising the belief in the political system and thus the legitimacy of democracy, interpersonal trust and social capital more generally. schneider (2001), selecting Latin-American executives and judiciary institutions for study, detects only a minor correlation between the perception of corruption and trust in these institu-tions. However, Mishler and Rose (2001) find in a study of ten post-communist countries that higher levels of corruption are related to lower levels of political trust. Della Porta (2000), examining france, Germany and Italy, demonstrates that although corruption leads to less trust in political institutions and parties it does not result in a general distrust towards other citizens. Anderson and tverdova (2003), examining sixteen established and new democracies around the world, report similar results. they show that corrup-tion affects people’s evaluations of their political system’s performance as well as the credibility of civil servants in a significantly negative manner. Catterberg and Moreno (2005) analysing new and established democracies and Chang and Chu (2006) focussing on Asian democracies also illustrate the fact that corruption reduces institutional trust significantly.
there is an increasing scepticism about the linkage between interpersonal and institu-tional trust. Lane contends that there is a mutual relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust because “trust in government officials may be a ‘specific instance of trust in mankind’” (1959, p. 164, cited in Brehm and Rahn 1997, p. 1003). Brehm and Rahn (1997) find that trust in public institutions has a stronger effect on interpersonal trust than vice versa. Levi (1998) and Rothstein and stolle (2003) emphasise the role of governments and political institutions in generating social trust. They can inspire confi-dence in the public only if citizens consider the state itself to be trustworthy. empirical research highlights the causal mechanism by asserting that particular practices of demo-cratic governments are associated with trust (Putnam 1993, Inglehart 1997, Delhey and Newton 2005). Particularly, in communist countries strong institutional trust often pre-vailed over weak generalised trust (Mishler and Rose 2001). However, Rose-Ackerman (2001, p. 531) claims that “trust in others does not necessarily translate into trust in gov-ernment.” similarly, Newton (2001) concludes that a strong relationship between inter-personal and institutional trust does not exist. “It follows that social and political trust do not have common origins in the same set of social conditions; they are different things with different causes” (Newton 2001, p. 201). By contrast, Morris and Klesner (2010) point out that trust in institutions has a large negative effect on generalised trust. tavit’s (2008) findings provide strong evidence that governments can have a significant impact on people’s well-being. examining the effect of corruption and representation on people’s subjective well-being, he demonstrates that people report higher levels of subjective well-being especially when their governments perform well (i.e., are not corrupt) and the party
123Corruption and trust: A model design
of their choice is in power. the effect of corruption overshadows that of macroeconomic variables and conditions the effect of representation—having one’s party of choice in power increases well-being when governments are clean but not when they are corrupt.
this literature review shows that a coherent theory explaining the connection between trust and corruption is still lacking. the development of a model could be a further step of describing the assumed interplay between these variables.
3 Hypotheses
traditionally, the dominant view in the current scholarly debate considers lack of interper-sonal trust as a cause and lack of institutional trust as a consequence of political corrup-tion. this means that political corruption could appear as mediator between interpersonal and institutional trust, which suggests the following causal model: Interpersonal trust → Political Corruption → Institutional trust. the hypothesis is that “Political corruption mediates the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust.” even though this supposition has been described rather implicitly in the literature, it has not been tested empirically in a broadly comparative design.
the methods used to study mediation empirically have been challenged by quantitative research and formally interpreted by Baron and Kenny (1986). the causal step method developed by them is recommended to detect such a mediator model. the authors discuss the different steps in establishing mediation, resulting in minor hypotheses which have to be proved: to create a model even the interplay of interpersonal and institutional trust is worth a closer look. Although Newton (2001) contests that there is no strong relationship between the two, there are some studies claiming its existence (Brehm and Rahn 1997; Rose-Ackerman 2001; Rothstein and stolle 2003). this connection is to be analysed for a set of 24 european countries. the case selection is, in particular, a result of data avail-ability. excluded states are either not considered by most data sources, such as Croatia, serbia and the ukraine, or are outliers within the dataset.
Consequently, this leads to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1a: “Levels of interpersonal trust strongly determine trust in political ins titutions.”
Initially, the interaction between corruption and interpersonal trust should be analysed.
Hypothesis 1b: “Levels of interpersonal trust strongly determine the degree of political corruption.”
This assumed relationship has been confirmed for different regions of the world (e.g. seligson 1999; Davis et al. 2004; Chang and Chu 2006; Richey 2010). However, this article analyses the European area for the first time.
Based on different studies concerning the relationship between corruption and institu-tional trust (e.g. Della Porta 2000; Mishler and Rose 2001; seligson 2002; Anderson and tverdova 2003), it is assumed for all european countries that:
124 I. Kubbe
Hypothesis 1c: “Levels of institutional trust strongly determine the degree of political corruption while controlling the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust.”
the next step encompasses multiple regressions or path modelling: a correlation between corruption and institutional trust is to be shown, while controlling the effect of inter-personal trust on institutional trust. If all steps are met, then the data are consistent with the basic hypothesis that corruption mediates the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust.
In a further step the data set is split into the Western and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to compare the results and find as well as discuss possible dif-ferences between them. In a comparison of the Western and east european countries concerning all hypotheses mentioned above, it is additionally expected that: “The rela-tionships are weaker in CEE than in the Western countries.” this hypothesis is based on the assumption that the civic nexus between trusting citizens and honest governance needs time to evolve, in order for it to become stronger with the maturation of democ-racies. In particular due to their communist past and the consequences of the political, economic and social transformation, characterised as the “dilemma of simultaneousness” (Offe 1991), it is supposed that these complex changes had negative effects on corruption and on trust with other people and in the political institutions of Cee. On the one hand some scholars claim that the legacy of the planned economy spawned a culture of corrup-tion, which persists after the breakdown of communism. On the other hand, they posit that the transition from a planned to a market economy has created a window of opportunity for engaging in corrupt practices (sandholtz and taagepera 2005; Møller and skaaning 2009). sandholtz and taagepera (2005, p. 110) argue that “the process of privatization itself opened myriad opportunities for corruption, especially since the administrators of the former system frequently devised and managed the privatization schemes.” these circumstances may have reduced the two forms of trust, and suggest a stronger relation-ship between the variables. the country reports of freedom House point out: “entrenched corruption remains a principal obstacle to democracy in transitional countries throughout the world” (freedom House 2013). Nevertheless, Holmes claims that “the crime and cor-ruption situation has stabilized or even improved in most post-communist countries in recent times” (Holmes 2009, p. 265).14
4 Data and Measures
Specifically, the research design combines aggregate-level indicators of corruption and interpersonal and institutional trust across 24 countries. the pooled data on trust are taken from the european social survey which is especially designed to chart and explain atti-tudes, beliefs and behaviours of different european societies and strive for optimal com-parability and therefore validity and reliability in the data collected across the countries.
14 this improvement is explained by the role of external agents as the eu, the development from transition to consolidation, and the role of political will.
125Corruption and trust: A model design
the pooled data on corruption are taken from transparency International. european coun-tries providing the most important variables for the analysis and a sufficient number of cases for regression and path analyses included Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, finland, france, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, spain, sweden, switzerland, turkey and the united Kingdom (West european countries) and Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, slovakia, slovenia (Central and eastern europe).
4.1 Measuring Corruption
Political corruption, the dependent variable, cannot be measured directly. Corrupt trans-actions are secretive by nature. They often take place in hidden, occult and unofficial settings and all participants are highly interested in keeping them secret. thus, objec-tive measures such as criminal indictments only tend to indicate the effectiveness of the judicial system rather than the actual level of the corruption in a country. However, in recent years, several organisations15 have developed a perception-based corruption index across a wide range of countries to quantify the pervasiveness of corruption. transpar-ency International has developed the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), one of the most frequently used and reliable indicators of political corruption around the world.16 first launched in 1995, the index is based on different surveys of the perception of business people and country experts regarding corruption around the world and ranks countries on a scale from ten to zero, according to the perceived level of corruption. figure 1 illustrates the distribution of the CPI across the european countries (2010) included in the analysis.
Corruption varies very widely across the different countries. In 2010, the average level of corruption in the 24 european states was 6.4. the average corruption level in the West-european countries was 7.3 (blue bars in fig. 1); in Central and eastern europe the aver-age score was 4.8 (green bars). this means that in the post-communist states the degree of corruption was still higher than in Western europe. However, the highest levels of corruption in 2010 were found in Greece (3.5), followed by Bulgaria (3.7) and Romania (3.7). the countries with the lowest levels of corruption were Denmark (9.3), finland and sweden (9.2) followed by the Netherlands (8.8), switzerland (8.7), Norway (8.6), Germany (7.9), united Kingdom (7.6) and Belgium (7.1). Of the remaining countries, six scored between six and seven (france, slovenia, estonia, Cyprus, spain, and Portugal), Poland between five and six (5.3), and five scored between four and five (Latvia, Slova-kia, turkey, Czech Republic, and Hungary).
15 Another corruption index is the World Bank’s Control of Corruption index (CoC) which highly correlates with the CPI. A great comparison of the CPI and CoC is offered by treisman (2007).
16 the index is limited in a number of ways (see for example urra 2007). first, it measures the per-ception of corruption and not the actual level of corrupt activity. therefore, the index includes a high subjective evaluation. Second, it does not reflect the activity of business people who refrain from corrupt activities at home, but engage in them abroad. third, it does not distinguish between different forms of corruption such as (1) public (administrative) and political (state) corruption and (2) petty and grand corruption. Despite its limitations, the CPI is widely used by several researchers (e.g. Montinola and Jackman 2002; tavits 2007; Møller and skaaning 2009) because of a lack of useful alternative measurements of political corruption.
126 I. Kubbe
4.2 Measuring trust
In 24 european countries, representative national samples of the population were sur-veyed in a face-to-face manner (five waves between 2002 and 2010). In the European social survey (ess), the variable interpersonal trust was assessed by asking respondents the following standard question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? Please tell me on a score of 0–10, where 0 means you can’t be too careful and 10 means that most people can be trusted.”17 this is a standard measure of interpersonal trust which is often used by researchers (e.g. Newton 2001; seligson 2002; Richey 2010).
the ess questionnaire included a battery of items to tap into people’s trust in different institutions of a political system: trust in the country’s parliament, trust in the legal sys-tem, trust in the police, trust in politicians, and trust in political parties. I created an index of institutional trust by including these five items of the battery, with low scores indicat-ing low levels of institutional trust and high scores indicating high levels of trust.18 the five items load onto one factor and, therefore, they can be combined in a single measure. this scale proves to be very reliable (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.973).
figure 2 shows the distribution of these two variables across countries in 2008.As in the case of corruption, the variation in the degrees of interpersonal and institu-
tional trust is quite strong in the european countries.the average level of interpersonal trust in 2008 is 4.8 and the level of institutional trust
is 4.2. the average interpersonal trust level in the West european countries is 5.1 and the institutional trust is 5.0. In the context of the Central and eastern european countries the
17 for each society the average score was calculated. Another way might be to take the percentage per country of the proportion of the people above a certain scale value.
18 Originally, the scale also captured trust in the european union and the united Nations. these institutions are not included because they do not belong to the national political system.
Fig. 1: Cross-national levels of corruption. (source: transparency International (2010))
127Corruption and trust: A model design
average interpersonal trust level is 4.2 and the institutional trust is 3.4. Hence, in post-communist countries, compared to Western european countries, less interpersonal and institutional trust exists.
the highest level of interpersonal trust was found in the Northern states, such as Den-mark (6.9), Norway (6.6), finland and sweden (6.4), followed by the Netherlands (5.9), switzerland (5.7), estonia (5.4), united Kingdom (5.3) and Belgium (5.1). Of the remain-ing countries, 11 scored between 4 and 5 (spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Cyprus, france, slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia and slovakia), four scored between three and four (Greece, Romania, Portugal, and Bulgaria). the lowest level of interpersonal trust could be found in turkey (2.3).
the highest average level of institutional trust was observed in Denmark (6.5) and finland (6.2) followed by Norway (5.8), switzerland (5.7), the Netherlands and sweden (5.6) and Cyprus (5.2).19 Nine countries scored between four and five (Turkey, Germany, Belgium, united Kingdom, france, spain, estonia, slovenia, and slovakia). Greece, Romania, Portugal, Czech Republic and Poland gained values between three and four. Of the remaining countries, three countries scored between two and three (Hungary, Latvia, and Bulgaria). the country with the lowest level of institutional trust was Bulgaria (2.1).
19 The high levels of trust in the Northern countries are a common finding in research on political culture and confirm the analysis of Delhey and Newton (2005) who partly link high levels of trust with the ethnic homogeneity, Protestant religious traditions, good government, wealth and income equality in these countries.
Fig. 2: Cross-national levels of interpersonal and institutional trust. (source: european social survey (2008))
128 I. Kubbe
On average, interpersonal trust was almost always higher than institutional trust. exceptions are formed by turkey, Cyprus and slovakia, where institutions are trusted although interpersonal trust is low. the comparative data clearly indicate that people in the post-communist states trust less in other members of the society and in political insti-tutions than people in the Western countries.
4.3 Control Variables
Previous research indicates that the level of democracy (e.g. Delhey 2002; Drury et al. 2006) and the legacies of the communist past (e.g. Miller et al. 2001; Møller and skaan-ing 2009) have a strong impact on political corruption; both therefore serve as control variables. the level of democracy is measured by freedom House and Polity20. the lega-cies of the communist past are measured by a dummy variable. A number of scholars argue that greater democracy can alleviate the level of corruption (e.g. treisman 2000; Paldam 2002; Drury et al. 2006; Billger and Goel 2009). the impact of the post-commu-nist past on levels of corruption is relatively unclear due to the difficulty in measurement. Opinion polls show that people do not generally blame communism for today’s problems. the level of corruption is mostly viewed either as a part of the moral crisis of transition or as a result of the country’s culture (e.g. Hutchcroft 1997). skaaning (2009, p. 226) even assumes that “as culture only changes slowly, the corrupt traditions have arguably survived the end of communist regimes. Communism is thus likely to have established a negative legacy. New bureaucracies were not created from scratch, large extents of the personnel carried over, and enterprises as well as private people in general had internal-ized certain practices.”
5 Analysis and Results
The mediator analysis proceeds in a number of steps. Firstly, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis “Levels of interpersonal trust strongly determine trust in political insti-tutions.” (H1a). The correlation coefficient (0.84) shows a strong relationship between the variables of the total samples. Additionally, the basic assumption can be regarded as valid, as Western European countries (0.82) achieve a greater correlation coefficient of interpersonal and institutional trust than the post-communist countries (0.70). this implies that the hypothesis that “The relationships are weaker in CEE than in the Western countries” gains preliminary verification.
20 this democracy scale ranges from 0 to 10, where 0 is least democratic and 10 most democratic. the average of freedom House is transformed into a scale from 0 to 10 and Polity is trans-formed into a scale from 0 to 10, which is then averaged into a new variable of democracy. the version has imputed values for countries where data on Polity is missing by regressing Polity on the average freedom House measure. Hadenius and teorell (2005) show that this average index performs better both in terms of validity and reliability than its constituent parts. source of data: Quality of Government Dataset.
129Corruption and trust: A model design
The coefficients of the following multivariate regression model confirm the results (table 1). When democracy and legacies of the past are controlled, the coefficients are still significant and show similar differences between both samples. Moreover, the degree of democracy is another predictor of institutional trust in Western countries.
Correlation coefficients show a significant relationship between corruption and inter-personal trust (total sample). The correlation coefficient between interpersonal trust and corruption is 0.85 (total sample), indicating that generally, more trusting societies tend to have less corruption in europe. the relationship runs from highly trusting societies with relatively low corruption, like Denmark, finland and sweden, to generally distrusting and highly corrupt societies like Romania and Bulgaria. there are no societies where both interpersonal trust and corruption are low or high at the same time. this indicates that corruption is strongly negatively related to interpersonal trust. In other words, the civic nexus between trusting citizens and honest governance also exists in europe. However, splitting the sample, the Western states show an even stronger relationship between the variables (0.87) than in Cee (0.53). As hypothesised, the civic nexus between trusting citizens and honest governance is more strongly developed in more mature democracies. The regression coefficients presented in Table 2 verify the assumed relationship between corruption and interpersonal trust in general (total sample).
The correlation coefficient between institutional trust and corruption is 0.87 (total sam-ple), indicating a similarly strong result as with interpersonal trust. It illustrates that soci-eties with less corruption, and more honest governance for that matter, have more trust
Table 1: Regression of institutional and interpersonal trustInstitutional trust (total sample)
in political institutions. However, comparing the two samples does not show a stronger effect for the Western countries (0.72) than the countries of Cee (0.72).
When interpersonal trust, democracy and legacies of the past are controlled, regres-sion analysis shows that the suggested link between institutional trust and corruption only exists in Central and eastern europe, but not in the Western part of europe (table 3).
It can be expected that the results verify the main hypothesis that political corrup-tion mediates interpersonal and institutional trust for the total sample. this means that interpersonal trust (the independent variable) affects institutional trust (the dependent variable) indirectly via corruption (the mediator variable). However, this is more pro-nouncedly the case for interpersonal trust in Western countries and for institutional trust in the post-communist societies.
Complementary to analyses with the CPI, all calculations were conducted using the Control of Corruption Index as an alternative measurement instrument. the results were virtually identical and substantiate the reliability of both indices.
6 Discussion and Conclusion
Certain scholars grapple with the question of the relationship between trust and corrup-tion, coming to different results. In this article, I have provided empirical results on the interplay of corruption (as a mediator) and trust that are both cause and consequence of corruption.
Firstly, the findings of the analysis clearly demonstrate that corruption reduces both interpersonal and institutional trust in europe. this is in line with other recent contributions which have demonstrated the negative effect of corruption on trust in Latin America and Asia (e.g. seligson 1999; Davis et al. 2004; Chang and Chu 2006; Richey 2010).
A comparison of the average levels of corruption and interpersonal and institutional trust in Western and post-communist countries tell an unequivocal story. firstly, although corruption is still part of social norms in the former socialist planned economy due to informal practices which are not likely to change overnight (Hutchcroft 1997; Holmes 2006; skaaning 2009), there are countries in Cee which have improved their degrees of corruption in recent years, such as Poland, estonia or slovenia, and there are countries in
Table 3: Regression of institutional trust and corruptionInstitutional trust (total sample)
Western Europe which show significantly worse corruption results, such as Spain, Greece or Portugal.
secondly, it is pointed out that low levels of interpersonal trust nurture corruption (interpersonal trust as a cause). In turn, high levels of corruption can negatively influ-ence people’s trust in political institutions (lack of institutional trust as a consequence). These assumptions are confirmed but reveal differences between the two country sets. These findings also confirm the suggested link of the civic nexus with the maturation of democracies.
thirdly, it is concluded that there might be a causal model of corruption and trust, including corruption as a mediator variable of interpersonal and institutional trust. for the Western and Central and eastern countries, this implies that increasing interpersonal trust enhances institutional trust. this is especially the case when the degree of corruption is minimised.
these results match previous studies claiming that the degree of corruption can be influenced by the level of interpersonal and institutional trust. Moreover, it is submitted that there are still differences between the Western and eastern countries including the fact that the relationship between corruption and interpersonal trust is even stronger in the Western countries, while the relationship between corruption and institutional trust is stronger in Cee.
the results of the post-communist countries could indicate that good governance and government performance can help improve the democratic situation and enhance citizens’ trust in political institutions. Citizens who perceive clean governments, higher levels of fairness, satisfaction and brightening economic prospects show higher trust in institu-tions. In a nutshell, governments can generate the confidence of the public only if citi-zens consider the state itself to be trustworthy (Levi 1998; Rothstein and stolle 2003). Consequently, corrupt actions in political contexts are of substantial relevance for regime support, a fact which often seems to be ignored by political elites involved.
As with all research, this study has some limitations in design and interpretation. future research might take a multi-level approach to analysing the predictors and out-comes of corruption and taking more account of the individual level. Moreover, working with larger data samples (although this would require improved data availability) would enhance the validity of the results. Moreover, trust could also be operationalised in a dif-ferent manner. Delhey et al. (2011) claim that interpersonal (generalised) trust should be further questioned by introducing a new battery of items which measure both in-group and out-group trust. Obviously, this is also claimed for the measurement of corruption, which is often criticised.
Naturally, further investigation is essential to better understand the factors determining corruption directly and indirectly and corruption’s relationship with trust. Only a deeper understanding of these critical factors can increase the prospects of success of interna-tional efforts to curb political corruption.
132 I. Kubbe
References
Anderson, Christopher J., and Yuliya V. tverdova. 2003. Corruption, political allegiances, and atti-tudes toward government in contemporary democracies. American Journal of Political Sci-ence 47 (1): 91–109.
Baron, Reuben M., and David A. Kenny. 1986. the moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (6): 1173–1182.
Beugelsdijk, sjoerd, Henri L. f. de Groot, and Anton B. t. M. van schaik. 2004. trust and eco-nomic growth: A robustness analysis. Oxford Economic Papers 56 (1): 118–134.
Billger, sherrilyn M., and Rajeev K. Goel. 2009. Do existing corruption levels matter in controlling corruption? Journal of Development Economics 90 (2): 299–305.
Brehm, John, and Wendy Rahn. 1997. Individual-level evidence for the causes and consequences of social capital. American Journal of Political Science 41 (3): 999–1023.
Catterberg, Gabriela, and Alejandro Moreno. 2005. the individual bases of political trust: trends in new and established democracies. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 18 (1): 31–48.
Chang, eric C., and Yun-han Chu. 2006. Corruption and trust: exceptionalism in Asian democra-cies? Journal of Politics 68 (2): 259–271.
Collier, Michael W. 2002. explaining corruption: An institutional choice approach. Crime, Law & Social Change 38 (1): 1–32.
Davis, Charles L., Roderic A. Camp, and Kenneth M. Coleman. 2004. The influence of party sys-tems on citizens’ perceptions of corruption and electoral response in Latin America. Compara-tive Political Studies 37 (6): 677–703.
Delhey, Jan. 2002. Korruption in den Bewerberländern zur Europäischen Union: Institutionen-qualität und Korruption in vergleichender Perspektive. Arbeitspapier FS III 02–401. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für sozialforschung (WzB).
Delhey, Jan, and Newton Kenneth. 2003. Who trusts? the origins of social trust in seven societies. European Societies 5 (2): 93–137.
Delhey, Jan, and Kenneth Newton. 2005. Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: Global pattern or nordic exceptionalism? European Sociological Review 21 (4): 311–327.
Delhey, Jan, Kenneth Newton, and Christian Welzel. 2011. How General is trust in ‘Most People’? A Global study of trust Radiuses. under Review at American Sociological Review (revise & resubmit).
Della Porta, Donatella. 2000. social capital, beliefs in government, and political corruption. In Disaffected democracies: What’s troubling the trilateral democracies?, ed. susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam, 202–230. Princeton: Princeton university Press.
Drury, A. Cooper, Jonathan Krieckhaus, and Michael Lusztig. 2006. Corruption, democracy, and economic growth. International Political Science Review 27 (2): 121–136.
freedom House. 2013. Entrenched corruption undercuts democratic development in transitional countries. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=401. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
fukuyama, francis. 1995. Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity. New York: free Press.
Hadenius, A., and J teorell. 2005. Assessing alternative indices of democracy. C & M working papers 6, IPsA.
Hardin, Russell. 2002. Trust and trustworthiness. New York: the Russell sage foundation series on trust.
Helliwell, John f. 2003. How’s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjec-tive well-being. Economic Modelling 20 (2): 331–360.
Holmes, Leslie. 2000. funktionen und Dysfunktionen der Korruption und ihrer Bekämpfung in Mittel- und Osteuropa. In Politische Korruption, ed. zentrum für europa- und Nordamerika-studien, 117–144. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Holmes, Leslie. 2006. Rotten states? Corruption, post-communism, and neoliberalism. Durham: Duke university Press.
Holmes, Leslie. 2009. Crime, organised crime and corruption in post-communist europe and the CIs. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 42 (2): 265–287.
Hutchcroft, Paul D. 1997. the politics of privilege: Assessing the impact of rents, corruption, and clientelism on third world development. Political Studies 45 (3): 639–658.
Inglehart, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies. Princeton: Princeton university Press.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. New York: Cambridge university Press.
La Porta, Rafael, florencio Lopez-de-silanes, Andrei schleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. 1997. trust in large organizations. American Economic Review 87 (2): 333–338.
Levi, Margaret. 1998. A state of trust. In Trust and governance, eds. Valerie Braithwait and Marga-ret Levi, 77–101. New York: Russell sage foundation.
Marien, Sofie, and Marc Hooghe. 2011. Does political trust matter? An empirical investigation into the relation between political trust and support for law of compliance. European Journal of Political Research 50 (2): 267–291.
Mauro, Paolo. 1995. Corruption and growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (3): 681–712.Mauro, Paolo. 1997. Why worry about corruption? Economic Issues 6. Washington: International
Monetary fund.Méon, Pierre-Guillaume, and Khalid sekkat. 2005. Does corruption grease or sand the wheels of
growth? Public Choice 122 (1): 69–97.Miller, Arthur H., and Ola Listhaug. 1999. Political performance and institutional trust. In Critical
citizens: Global support for democratic governance, ed. Pippa Norris, 204–216. New York: Oxford university Press.
Miller, William L., Åse B. Grødeland, and tatyana Y. Koshechkina, eds. 2001. A culture of cor-ruption? Coping with government in post-communist Europe. Budapest: Central european university Press.
Mishler, William, and Richard Rose. 2001. What are the origins of political trust? testing institu-tional and cultural theories in post-communist societies. Comparative Political Studies 34 (1): 30–62.
Møller, Jørgen, and svend-erik skaaning. 2009. Post-communist corruption: In A league of its own? Australian Journal of Political Science 44 (4): 721–730.
Montinola, Gabriella R., and Robert W. Jackman. 2002. sources of corruption: A cross-country study. British Journal of Political Science 32 (1): 147–170.
Moreno, Alejandro. 2002. Corruption and democracy: A cultural assessment. Comparative Sociol-ogy 1 (3–4): 495–507.
Morris, stephen D., and Joseph L. Klesner. 2010. Corruption and trust: theoretical considerations and evidence from Mexico. Comparative Political Studies 43 (10): 1258–1285.
Newton, Kenneth. 2001. trust, social capital, civil society, and democracy. International Political Science Review 22 (2): 201–214.
Norris, Pippa, ed. 1999. Critical citizens: Global support for democratic government. Oxford: Oxford university Press.
Offe, Claus. 1991. Das Dilemma der Gleichzeitigkeit. Demokratisierung und Marktwirtschaft in Osteuropa. Merkur 45:279–292.
Paldam, Martin. 2002. the cross-country pattern of corruption: economics, culture and the seesaw dynamics. European Journal of Political Economy 18 (2): 215–240.
134 I. Kubbe
Paldam, Martin, and Gert t. svendsen. 2001. Missing social capital and the transition from social-ism. Journal for Institutional Innovation, Development and Transition 5:21–34.
Pharr, Susan J. 2000. Official’s misconduct and public distrust: Japan and the trilateral democracies. In Disaffected democracies: What’s troubling the trilateral democracies, eds. susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam, 173–201. Princeton: Princeton university Press.
Philp, Mark. 2009. Conceptualizing political corruption. In Political corruption. Concepts and con-texts. 3rd ed., eds. Arnold J. Heidenheimer and Michael Johnston, 41–57. New Brunswick: transaction Publishers.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton university.
Richey, sean. 2010. the impact of corruption on social trust. American Politics Research 38 (4): 676–690.
Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2008. Counter-democracy: Politics in an age of distrust. Cambridge: Cam-bridge university Press.
Rose, Richard, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpfer. 1998. Democracy and its alternatives: Understanding post-communist societies. Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins university Press.
Rose-Ackerman, susan. 1999. Corruption and government: Causes, consequences, and reform. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press.
Rose-Ackerman, Susan. 2001. Trust, honesty and corruption: Reflections on the state building pro-cess. Archives of European Sociology 42 (3): 526–570.
Rothstein, Bo, and Dietlind stolle. 2002. How political institutions create and destroy social capi-tal: An institutional theory of generalized trust. Paper prepared for the 98th meeting of the American Political science Association in Boston, MA, August 29-september 2, 2002.
Rothstein, Bo, and Dietlind stolle. 2003. social capital, impartiality and the Welfare state: An insti-tutional approach. In Generating social capital: Civil society and institutions in comparative perspective, eds. Marc Hooghe and Dietlind stolle, 191–210. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Rothstein, Bo, and eric M. uslaner. 2005. All for all: equality, corruption, and social trust. World Politics 58 (1): 41–72.
sandholtz, Wayne, and Rein taagepera. 2005. Corruption, Culture and Communism. International Review of Sociology 15 (1): 109–31.
sandholtz, Wayne, and William Koetzle. 2000. Accounting for corruption: economic structure, democracy, and trade. International Studies Quarterly 44 (1): 31–50.
schneider, Carsten Q. 2001. Korruption und Vertrauen in Implementationsinstitutionen: ein Ver-gleich Lateinamerikas mit konsolidierten Demokratien. In Rechtsstaat und Demokratie, eds. Hans-Joachim Lauth, Michael Becker and Gert Pickel, 275–298. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.
seligson, Mitchell A. 1999. Nicaraguans talk about corruption: A follow-up study of public opin-ion. Arlington: Casals and Associates.
seligson, Mitchell A. 2002. the impact of corruption on regime legitimacy: A comparative study of four Latin American Countries. Journal of Politics 64 (2): 408–433.
skaaning, svend e. 2009. Corruption in the post-communist countries: A study of its particularity and diversity. In Totalitarismus und Transformation: Defizite der Demokratiekonsolidierung in Mittel- und Osteuropa, eds. tutys Jaskulowski, uwe Backes and Abel Polese, 223–238. Göt-tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
tavits, Margit. 2008. Representation, corruption, and subjective well-being. Comparative Political Studies 41 (12): 1607–1630.
transparency International (tI). 2013a. Definition of corruption. http://transparency.org/what-wedo. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
transparency International (tI). 2013b. Rationale. http://transparency.org.au/index.php/about-us/mission-statement/. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
treisman, Daniel. 2000. the causes of corruption. A cross-national study. Journal of Public Eco-nomics 76 (2): 399–457.
treisman, Daniel. 2007. What have we learned about the causes of corruption from ten years of cross-national empirical research? Annual Review of Political Science 10:211–244.
tulchin, Joseph s., and Ralph H. espach. 2000. Combating corruption in Latin America. Washing-ton: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.
urra, francisco-Javier. 2007. Assessing corruption. An analytic review of corruption measurement and its problems: Perception, error and utility. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan028792.pdf. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
uslaner, eric M. 2002. The moral foundations of trust. New York: Cambridge university Press.uslaner, eric M. 2004. trust and corruption. In Corruption and the New Institutional Economics,
eds. Johann Graf Lambsdorf, Markus taube and Matthias schramm, 76–92. London: Routledge.
Warren, Mark e. 2006. Political corruption as duplicitous exclusion. PS. Political Science and Politics 37 (4): 803–807.
Wei, shang-Jin, and Yi Wu. 2001. Negative alchemy? Corruption, composition of capital flows, and currency crises. Cid working paper no. 66. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/centers/cid/publications/faculty/wp/066.pdf. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
Welzel, Christian. 2007. Are levels of democracy influenced by mass attitudes? International Polit-ical Science Review 28 (4): 397–424.
World Bank. 2013. Cost and consequences of corruption. http://web.worldbank.org/WBsIte/eXteRNAL/tOPICs/eXtPuBLICseCtORANDGOVeRNANCe/eXtANtICORRuPtION/0,,contentMDK:20221941~menuPK:384473~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~thesitePK:384455,00.html. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
You, Jong-su. 2005. Corruption and inequality as correlates of social trust: Fairness matters more than similarity. Working paper no. 29. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/PDf_XLs/work-ingpapers/workingpaper_29.pdf. Accessed: 18 Mar. 2013.
zak, Paul. J., and stephen Knack. 2001. trust and growth. Economic Journal 111 (470): 295–321.
