Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:24:52.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

All Sins are not Created Equal: The Factors that Drive Perceptions of Corruption Severity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2019

Lucy E. S. Martin Open the ORCID record for Lucy E. S. Martin [Opens in a new window]
Lucy E. S. Martin*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite corruption’s effects on citizen welfare, there is substantial variation in when citizens are willing to sanction government wrongdoing. This paper uses a conjoint survey experiment, conducted in Uganda, to test how information about the position a corrupt official holds, and the details of an act of embezzlement affect citizens’ perceptions of corruption severity and willingness to punish. I find that the revenue source of stolen funds and the sector to which the funds had been allocated have the largest impact on perceived severity, followed by whether stolen funds are spent privately or recirculated through patronage or clientelism. The position the corrupt official holds has a smaller impact on severity, including whether the official was elected and whether he was a central or local official.

Keywords

CorruptionUgandasurvey experimentaccountability
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 15 - 25
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Support for this research was provided by Yale University and a Vanguard Charitable Trust. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: doi: 10.7910/DVN/ID1KJG. This research was greatly improved by advice and feedback from Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Robert Blair, Chris Blattman, Helen Milner, Laura Paler, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Ken Scheve, Brigitte Seim, Susan Stokes, and Rory Truex, as well as the participants of UNC’s Comparative Working Group and APSA 2016. This research would not have been possible without the phenomenal team at Innovations for Poverty Action in Uganda, especially my team leaders Dean Buruhan, Ben Kakembo, Esther Kasoga, and Justine Lubuga. All errors are entirely the fault of the author.

References

Afrobarometer Data. 2015. Uganda, round 6. http://www.afrobarometer.org.Google Scholar
Anduiza, E., Gallego, A., and Muñoz, J.. 2013. Turning a Blind Eye: Experimental evidence of Partisan Bias in Attitudes Toward Corruption. Comparative Political Studies 46(12): 1664–92.Google Scholar
Aragonès, E., Postlewaite, A., and Palfrey, T.. 2007. Political Reputations and Campaign Promises. Journal of the European Economic Association, 5(4): 846–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheeseman, N. 2015. Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform, vol. 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunning, T., Grossman, G., Humphreys, M., Hyde, S., McIntosh, C., and Nellis, G.. eds. 2019. Information, Accountability, and Cumulative Learning: Lessons from Metaketa I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekeh, P. P. 1975. Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement. Comparative Studies in Society and History 17(1): 91–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E. and Gachter, S.. 2000. Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments. American Economic Review 90(4): 980–994.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. and Schmidt, K. M.. 1999. A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(3): 817–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández-Vázquez, P., Barberá, P., and Rivero, G.. 2016. Rooting Out Corruption or Rooting for Corruption? The Heterogeneous Electoral Consequences of Scandals. Political Science Research and Methods 4(2): 379–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisman, R. and Gatti, R.. 2000. Decentralization and Corruption: Evidence across Countries. World Bank, Washington. Technical report World Bank Working Paper.Google Scholar
Fisman, R. and Miguel, E.. 2007. Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets. Journal of Political Economy 115(6): 1020–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervasoni, C. 2010. A Rentier Theory of Subnational Regimes: Fiscal Federalism, Democracy, and Authoritarianism in the Argentine Provinces. World Politics 62(2): 302–40.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, J. 2016. Greater Expectations: A Field Experiment to Improve Accountability in Mali. American Journal of Political Science 60(1): 143–57.Google Scholar
Martin, L. 2016. Taxation, Loss Aversion, and Accountability: Theory and Experimental Evidence for Taxation’s Effect on Citizen Behavior. Working Paper. URL: http://tinyurl.com/jxgeqeq Google Scholar
Martin, L. 2019. Replication Data for: All Sins are not Created Equal: Perceptions of Corruption Severity. Harvard Dataverse, V3.Google Scholar
Oates, W. E. 1999. An Essay on Fiscal Federalism. Journal of Economic Literature 37(3): 1120–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olken, B. A. 2009. Corruption Perceptions vs. Corruption Reality. Journal of Public Economics 93(7): 950–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paler, L. 2013. Keeping the Public Purse: An Experiment in Windfalls, Taxes, and The incentives to Restrain Government. American Political Science Review 107(4): 706–25.Google Scholar
Raffler, P. 2016. Does Political Oversight of the Bureaucracy Increase Accountability? Field Experimental Evidence from an Electoral Autocracy. Technical report Working paper, Yale University.Google Scholar
Serra, D. 2006. Empirical Determinants of Corruption: A Sensitivity Analysis. Public Choice 126(1–2): 225–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, A., Thompson, T., and Zou, H.-F.. 2004. The Impact of Decentralization on Service Delivery, Corruption, Fiscal Management and Growth in Developing and Emerging market Economies: A Synthesis of Empirical Evidence. CESifo DICE Report 1(2004): 10–14.Google Scholar
Tanzi, V. 1996. Fiscal Federalism and Decentralization: A Review of Some Efficiency and Macroeconomic Aspects. In Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1995, eds. Bruno, M. and Pleskovic, B. 295–317.Google Scholar
Treisman, D. 2007. The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralization. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Truex, R. 2011. Corruption, Attitudes, and Education: Survey Evidence from Nepal. World Development 39(7): 1133–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UBOS. 2017. The Uganda National Household Survey 2016/2017. Ugandan Bureau of Statistics. URL: https://www.ubos.org/online_les/uploads/ubos/pdf%20documents/2017UNHS26092017-FinalPresentation.pdf Google Scholar
Wantchekon, L. 2003. Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin. World Politics 55(3): 399–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Martin Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ID1KJG
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Martin supplementary material

Martin supplementary material

Download Martin supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.7 MB