Are different types of corruption tolerated differently?

Abstract

In the past two decades, abundant research on corruption has established its negative impact on human well-being. Indeed, general scholarship finds that it is appropriately shunned across contexts, with citizens in different cultures and contexts expressing a general aversion to corruption. However, what is less explored is whether different types of corruption are tolerated differently. To address this question, we explore citizen attitudes towards different types of corruption in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Romania, and Spain. Participants were presented with vignettes describing different corrupt scenarios—specifically, traffic bribery, nepotism, state capture, patronage, embezzlement, clientelism, conflict of interest, and quid pro quo—and asked to score each one on an 11-point Likert scale. We used a neutral narrative in the vignettes to minimize the bias that may be introduced through the wording. Our results suggest different types of corruption are tolerated differently. Specifically, tolerance of corruption (1) varies across types of corruption, with embezzlement and patronage being, on average, the least and most tolerated types of corruption, respectively; (2) varies across countries, with respondents from Indonesia and Spain being, on average, the most and least tolerant, and (3) varies across countries for the same type of corruption, with respondents expressing more consensus about their disapproval of embezzlement compared to that of clientelism, nepotism, or conflict of interest. The study finds several statistically significant differences in tolerance of corruption across countries and scenarios, reflecting the versatility of corruption and the importance of specification and contextualization when devising public anticorruption initiatives.