It is sometimes claimed that tolerance for corruption is universally low, i.e. that corruption is generally shunned in all societies and cultures. Against this backdrop, this article engages in two interrelated tasks: to descriptively map variations in corruption tolerance (both between and within countries), and exploratively seek determinants that shape tolerance of corruption 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 tolerance to corruption than the public in general. Second, we find striking variations in corruption tolerance between such homogenous, low-corrupt and other respects similar nations as Iceland and Sweden; differences we argue can be traced back to their different pathways to representative democracy and strong state-capacity respectively. Third, analysing within-country variations in these countries, we observe that civil-servants generally have a lower tolerance for corruption than do e.g. the ‘ordinary public’ and ‘politicians’. The latter result lends strength to the argument that bureaucracy and professional civil-servants ought to have autonomy from the influence of politicians and executives in order to act as guardians of democracy and credible commitment to non-corruption.
