Responses to Corruption: Democracy as an Anti-Corruption Measure?

Abstract

Corruption became a hot topic in the 1990s, especially after World Bank and International Monetary Fund studies confirmed that high corruption levels reduce economic growth. Other studies have revealed that corruption negatively affects economic agents, domestic public policymakers, international donors, and citizens in general, as it is thought to increase the costs of economic and financial transactions; to create severe inefficiencies in the implementation of public policy; to decrease citizens’ trust in public institutions; and ultimately to decrease their support for democracy. This panel proposal contributes to the discussions that consider corruption as a challenge to the establishment of more democratic societies. The basic question that drives this panel is: How can we think, considering contemporary political theory, comparative studies or case analysis, the connection between democracy and corruption? Pursuing answers to this question requires normative and empirical forms of expertise. In this panel we try to merge different views on this connection, challenging old assumptions, such as the one that says that some corruption could make democracies work better. Notwithstanding, the link between the two phenomena does not seem so easy to solve – in Latin America, for example, much of the growing literature tends to focus on explaining why, despite theoretical expectation, democratization have failed to curb the levels of corruption in the region. From a phenomenon that is difficult to access and even more difficult to measure, this panel brings the debate about old promises that democracy may have done, questions if we should keep our expectations high and asks how we can critically update the effects of democracy on corruption and vice versa.

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