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Democracy and corruption: reassessing measurement and causality
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DOI：10.1080/13510347.2026.2665239.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
A large body of literature argues that democracy influences corruption, though scholars disagree about the form and timing of this relationship. The traditional view holds that democracy exerts a linear short-run constraining effect on corruption, while newer perspectives emphasize long-run effects arising from democratic experience and socialization, curvilinear relationships, and even reverse causation effects from corruption to democracy. We advance this discussion in two ways. First, theoretically, we note that a minimalist conception of democracy suggests a linear effect on corruption while a maximalist conception of democracy suggests a curvilinear effect. We show that this is the overall pattern of results when one compares maximalist definitions (V-Dem and Freedom House) with minimalist definitions (ACLP, Polity). Second, we assess endogeneity through dynamic panel Granger non-causality tests. We find some evidence of bidirectional Granger causality.
Keywords:
Democracy
corruption
causality
curvilinear
linear
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