Direct and indirect influences of political regimes on corruption

Abstract

This paper studies the direct and indirect impacts of political regimes on corruption. Whereas the interplay of government is fundamental to corrupt acts, the present research sheds new light by showing the direct and indirect influences of dimensions of government structure on corruption. Methods: We employ two different estimation techniques. First, we use OLS regressions, with year and regional dummies. Second, we employ mediation analysis to account for the intermediate role of government size in the relation between government structure and corruption in order to gauge the direct and indirect influences on corruption Results: Results show that government structure, across various dimensions of authoritarian and nonauthoritarian regimes, significantly impacted cross-national corruption. In particular, a nation's stock of democracy and parliamentary systems lowered corruption, while executive tenure and dimensions of authoritarianism added to corruption. On the other hand, the size of the legislature did not matter when it came to corruption. However, the direct influences of these government structure variables are mitigated or reinforced when the intermediate role of government size is considered in a mediation analysis. Conclusions: The breakdown into the direct and indirect effects on corruption is a novel insight of this work, with useful policy implications.

Government expenditure and economic growth: does the role of corruption control matter?

“…Sharing the same view, Malanski and Póvoa (2021) found a negative impact of corruption on EG in emerging countries in Latin America and Pacific Asia. Meanwhile, Goel and Nelson (2021) stated that the effectiveness of CC in countries depends on the size and structure of the government. Recently, Banerjee et al.…”

Managing the risk of COVID‐19 via vaccine passports: Modeling economic and policy implications

“…Although the intention is to facilitate travel and commerce, such regulation, as with all regulations, would come with an increase in the size and scope of the government. Besides direct costs on the government and taxpayers, government size had been linked to greater corruption via increased bureaucratic red tape (British Medical Journal, 2020 ; Goel & Nelson, 1998 , 2021 ; Goel et al, 2021 ; Vrushi & Kukutschka, 2021 ). In regard to VPs, one potential avenue for corruption could be associated with the approval of certain vaccines to be included in the passports, while others (that failed to bribe regulators) are left out.…”

The Nexus between Corruption and Academic Freedom: An International Examination Using Mediation Analysis

“…Since corruption has various causes and effects (Dimant and Tosato (2018), Treisman (2007)) and given that the academic freedom-corruption nexus is the central theme of this work, we examine the influence of the different factors considered in Table 3 in terms of their direct effects on academic freedom and their indirect effects (through corruption). The mediation analysis enables us to dissect the direct and indirect effects (see Goel and Nelson (2021) for an alternative application of the mediation analysis; also see Ezcurra and Zuazu (2022)).…”

“…For instance, academic freedom and democracy might be related (Bryden and Mittenzwei (2013)), while democracy might be related to corruption (Chowdhury (2004), Kalenborn and Lessmann (2013)), with democracy also including elements of press freedom that have also been shown to impact corruption (Brunetti and Weder (2003), Dutta and Roy (2016), Freille et al (2007), Goel and Nelson (2005)). Further, the interactions of government spending with institutions and other socio-economic aspects have been studied (de Vaal and Ebben (2011), Goel and Nelson (2021)), as have the different dimensions of enforcement and their relative effects on corrupt activity (Capasso et al (2019)).…”