Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden.
It is sometimes argued that tolerance for corruption is universally low, i.e. that corruption is shunned among all individuals, in all societies and cultures. Against this backdrop, this paper engages in two interrelated tasks: to descriptively map variations in corruption tolerance in two low-corru...
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The Quality of Government Institute
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ftunivgoeteborg:oai:gupea.ub.gu.se:2077/58532 2023-05-15T16:48:10+02:00 Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur Kristinsson, Gunnar Helgi 2018-10 31 http://hdl.handle.net/2077/58532 eng eng The Quality of Government Institute Working Papers 2018:5 article, other scientific 2018 ftunivgoeteborg 2019-06-21T10:17:07Z It is sometimes argued that tolerance for corruption is universally low, i.e. that corruption is shunned among all individuals, in all societies and cultures. Against this backdrop, this paper engages in two interrelated tasks: to descriptively map variations in corruption tolerance in two low-corrupt countries, and exploratively identify factors that influence tolerance of cor-ruption at the individual level. We note that although corruption tends to be widely disliked, there are shades to this dislike. In particular, three results stand out from our analyses. First, we reject the ‘pureness of the people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’-hypothesis, observing that if anything, politicians are less tolerant of corruption than the general public. Second, we find striking differences in corruption tolerance between such homogenous, low-corrupt and in other respects such similar nations as Iceland and Sweden; differences we argue could be traced back to their different paths to representative democracy and strong state-capacity respectively. Third, analysing within-country variations in these countries, we observe that civil-servants generally tend to have a lower tolerance for corruption than do e.g. the ‘ordi-nary public’ and ‘politicians’. This last result lends strength to the argument that bureaucracy and professional civil-servants should be given discretion and a high degree of autonomy from the influence of politicians to be able to lend support to a credible commitment to non-corruption. Other/Unknown Material Iceland University of Gothenburg: GUPEA (Gothenburg University Publications Electronic Archive) |
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University of Gothenburg: GUPEA (Gothenburg University Publications Electronic Archive) |
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ftunivgoeteborg |
language |
English |
description |
It is sometimes argued that tolerance for corruption is universally low, i.e. that corruption is shunned among all individuals, in all societies and cultures. Against this backdrop, this paper engages in two interrelated tasks: to descriptively map variations in corruption tolerance in two low-corrupt countries, and exploratively identify factors that influence tolerance of cor-ruption at the individual level. We note that although corruption tends to be widely disliked, there are shades to this dislike. In particular, three results stand out from our analyses. First, we reject the ‘pureness of the people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’-hypothesis, observing that if anything, politicians are less tolerant of corruption than the general public. Second, we find striking differences in corruption tolerance between such homogenous, low-corrupt and in other respects such similar nations as Iceland and Sweden; differences we argue could be traced back to their different paths to representative democracy and strong state-capacity respectively. Third, analysing within-country variations in these countries, we observe that civil-servants generally tend to have a lower tolerance for corruption than do e.g. the ‘ordi-nary public’ and ‘politicians’. This last result lends strength to the argument that bureaucracy and professional civil-servants should be given discretion and a high degree of autonomy from the influence of politicians to be able to lend support to a credible commitment to non-corruption. |
format |
Other/Unknown Material |
author |
Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur Kristinsson, Gunnar Helgi |
spellingShingle |
Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur Kristinsson, Gunnar Helgi Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
author_facet |
Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur Kristinsson, Gunnar Helgi |
author_sort |
Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur |
title |
Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
title_short |
Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
title_full |
Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
title_fullStr |
Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from Iceland and Sweden. |
title_sort |
exploring shades of corruption tolerance: three lessons from iceland and sweden. |
publisher |
The Quality of Government Institute |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/2077/58532 |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_relation |
Working Papers 2018:5 |
_version_ |
1766038276603379712 |