Factors influencing political corruption. An empirical research study of regional governments
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523231159244 |
| Author | Daniel Raya-Quero,Andrés Navarro-Galera,José Luis Sáez-Lozano |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Factors influencing
political corruption. An
empirical research study of
regional governments
Daniel Raya-Quero
University of Granada, Spain
Andrés Navarro-Galera
University of Granada, Spain
José Luis Sáez-Lozano
University of Granada, Spain
Abstract
International organisations assert that political corruption is a major global problem.
However, it is still unclear how to combat corruption. Previous research has studied
corruption in central or local governments, rarely in regional ones. In this paper, we
aim to identify factors influencing political corruption in regional governments. Using
panel data, we analyse the statistical association between 29 economi c, financial, political
and socioeconomic variables and the corruption perceived by citizens, from January
2006 to September 2019. The results reveal that perceived political corruption is
affected by government spending and ideological distance, among other factors. We pro-
pose several measures to reduce political corruption.
Points for practitioners
The study has found that political corruption needs to be combatted through different
measures for each administrative level. Our results support the idea that the following
variables influence the perceived level of corruption within the regional governments:
the volume of government borrowing, the ideological distance between the voter and
Corresponding author:
Daniel Raya-Quero, Department of Corporate Law, University of Granada, Faculty of Law, Plaza de la
Universidad, 18001, Granada, Spain.
Email: rayad@ugr.es
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 149–166
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523231159244
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
the government, the percentage electoral participation and the volume of dependent
and immigrant population of the region. Likewise, we also confirm that regional govern-
ments with higher values on the Quality of GovernmentIndex are perceived as less
corrupt.
Keywords
political corruption, regional governments, financial factors, political factors, socioeconomic
factors, Spain
Introduction
The impact of political corruption on national development is a major problem world-
wide, often producing severe economic damage. Accordingly, it has been the subject
of numerous studies in many countries (Bernardes do Nascimento et al., 2019;
Chabova, 2017; Guillamon et al., 2021; Jetter and Parmeter, 2018).
Specifically, research findings show that high levels of corruption in the public sector can
hamper economic development (Billger and Goel, 2009; Goel and Nelson, 2010), reduce
foreign investment and aggravate the fiscal deficit (Bernardes do Nascimento et al., 2019;
Guillamonet al., 2021). Thus, thewidespreadexistence of fraud and bribery justi fiesthe timeliness
and interest of investigating how political corruption in the public sector may best be combated.
The question of eradicating political corruption has also been addressed in inter-
national organisations, such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
More recently, the World Bank, the OECD and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
joined forces to develop the Good Practices Guide to Preventing and Managing
Conflicts of Interest in the Public Sector (UN, 2019). Also, the OECD Anti-Bribery
Convention (OECD, 2020) established legally binding rules to criminalise the bribery
of public officials. Moreover, the World Bank has denounced the risks of corruption in
the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (World Bank, 2020) and the IMF (2019) has
highlighted the enormous damage inflicted by corruption on public finances. It has
been estimated that the cost of this corruption is equivalent to 1.25% of the world’s GDP.
In this international context, researchers have sought to identify the factors which
facilitate or promote this behaviour, to design and implement dissuasive measures.
Levels of political corruption have been measured according to various criteria, including
the number of cases brought to prosecution (Lopez-Iturriaga and Sanz, 2018;
Vela-Bargues et al., 2022), indices of corruption prepared by trustworthy institutions
(Billger and Goel, 2009) and public opinion surveys (Chabova, 2017).
Other studies have researched the relationship between the level of political corruption
and various explanatory factors: (a) economic and financial (Benito et al., 2018;
Lopez-Iturriaga and Sanz, 2018); (b) political (Kotera et al., 2012); and (c) socio-
economic (Bernardes do Nascimento et al., 2019; Jetter and Parmeter, 2018).
However, almost all these papers have focused exclusively on the national administra-
tive situation within a given country (Bernardes do Nascimento et al., 2019; De Mingo
and Cerrillo-i-Martínez, 2018).
150 International Review of Administrative Sciences 90(1)
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