Corruption and the satisfaction with democracy

Abstract

Recent years have shown not only a global decline in democracy, but also that citizens increasingly express dissatisfaction with democracy. Previous research has shown that corruption fosters dissatisfaction with democracy. Existing literature does, however, ignore the temporal perspective, resulting in uncertainty whether changes in corruption lead to changes to in satisfaction with democracy. This gap in the literature is addressed by performing a cross sectional time series analysis using a fixed effects model. The results show a statistically significant effect of that corruption, as an indicator of Quality of Government, affects satisfaction with democracy negatively. The results of the study also show that there is a significant moderating effect of economic inequalities, indicating that corruption has a stronger effect on satisfaction with democracy when economic inequalities are high. Key words: corruption, Quality of Government, satisfaction with democracy, economic inequality, panel analysis