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Does Corruption Have Social Roots? The Role of Culture and Social Capital

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Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse the influence of sociocultural factors on corruption levels. Taking as starting point Husted (J Int Bus Studies 30:339–359, 1999) and Graeff (In: Lambsdorff J, Taube M, Schramm M (eds) The new institutional economics of corruption. Routledge, London, 2005) proposals, we consider both the interrelation between cultural dimensions and the diverse expressions of social capital with corruption. According to our results, the universalistic trust (linking and bridging social capital) constitutes a positive social capital that is negatively linked to corruption. In contrast, the particularistic levels of trust (bonding) can constitute a negative social capital directly related to corruption levels. Furthermore, cultures which are favourable to the legitimation of dependency relations and the formation of closed particularistic groups (power-distance and community factors) create a breeding ground for the development of these amoral rent-seeking structures.

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Notes

  1. With respect to Economics, corruption has been integrated into the research agenda for the last quarter of XX century, as international data on this problem emerged and the institutionalist research program was developed. The seminal works of Rose-Ackerman (1975, 1978) are an essential reference as the booting of a purely economic approach to the problems of corruption. Zamagni (1999) reviewed the main studies on the subject.

  2. However, the existence of divergent explanatory guidelines should be noted. Some studies have shown that the relationship between corruption and output levels are not monotonic (Kaufmann and Kraay 2002; Canavese 2006). According to these approaches, under certain circumstances of inefficiency in the functioning of government, corruption may be a second best that mitigates the deficiencies of the bureaucracy.

  3. In general, the appropriation by individuals of the instruments that the government has at its disposal reduces the state’s ability to play its role on market correction. To a certain extent, this process could be interpreted as a privatization of the state but without returning the role played to the market, and instead to bureaucracy (LaPorta et al. 1998; Tanzi 1998; Leite and Weidmann 1999). Moreover, reducing the discretion of public officials and the decentralization of authority has been significant insomuch as reducing corruption in economies penetrated by market relations (Johnson et al. 1998; Fisman and Gati 2002; Treisman 2000; Kranton 1996). At the same time, competition within the press and even political competition are very effective in reducing corruption. Thus, corruption is a particularly salient problem in authoritarian regimes (Treisman 2000).

  4. NSE affirms that it is inappropriate to consider corruption as the exclusive result of inadequate organizational and institutional framework. This proposal adopts the basic results of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) and its derivatives on Game Theory (transaction costs, probability of uncovering…) as a starting point, but completes them with an analysis of the cultural roots of corruption.

  5. Previous studies have applied the Hofstede model for modelling market ethics (Vitell et al. 1993), although the economic variables are not specifically included in them, limiting the analysis to the perception of ethical problems and the existence of informal codes of behaviour.

  6. In this respect it is noted that the larger the group the greater coercion, since the defection of a single member poses a risk to the others. This is the case of the mafia.

  7. Trust is measured as the percentage of the population that recognizes having trust in society as a whole (generalistic) or in a particular institution (family, unions…).

  8. The only factor that is irrelevant or not significant is the masculine-feminine dimension. This is the only variable that is independent of any other cultural and social expression. In fact, Hofstede (1999) himself believes that it integrates aspects that can have different manifestations regardless of the levels of development of a society.

  9. Horizontal associations are groups formed spontaneously between peers, on the contrary, vertical associationism is related with top-down groups directly linked with some forms of authority (political parties…).

  10. We applied ordinary least squares linear models using cross section data.

  11. The Global Economic Freedom Index is a pool indicator composed of several related indices.

  12. In all models we find a combination of high R 2 values and high significance of regressors, so that problems derived from the existence of multicollinearity are limited.

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  1. Department of Applied Economics, University of A Coruña, La Coruña, Spain

    José Atilano Pena López & José Manuel Sánchez Santos

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  1. José Atilano Pena López
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Correspondence to José Atilano Pena López.

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Pena López, J.A., Sánchez Santos, J.M. Does Corruption Have Social Roots? The Role of Culture and Social Capital. J Bus Ethics 122, 697–708 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1789-9

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