Corruption, Education and Political Behavior

Corruption is a problem plaguing not only autocracies, but also most of the world’s established democracies. Researchers have therefore in recent years started to acknowledge corruption as aninteresting factor in explaining democratic attitudes and behavior. However, one important aspect that is overlooked in the literature is how corruption interacts with individual characteristics in shaping political behavior. This paper explores the interaction between corruption and education - arguably the most powerful explanatory factor in the literature on democratic behavior. Using both individual- and country-level data from 31 democracies I show that corruption thwarts many of the positive effects of education with regard to politics: The results indicate that when corruption is high, educated and politically sophisticated citizens are as likely as low-educated citizens to feel resignation and abstain from voting. This suggests that politically competent citizens might be themost affected in their political behavior when they perceive corruption to be high.