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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: lucy.martin@unc.edu
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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

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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.

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