Perceptions Of Corruption & External Political Efficacy: Regime Stability & Democratic Legitimacy
Do perceptions of corruption affect external political efficacy? If so, how? This paper investigates whether perceptions of corruption contribute to external efficacy on the aggregate, country level, and on the individual level. This paper seeks to expand the scope of the current corruption and efficacy literatures by examining, on the aggregate level, ninety five countries, and on the individual level, all available barometer surveys from the period of 2000-2012. Methods of analysis include time series, standard OLS, and hierarchical, or multilevel, modeling. In addition to the primary research question, this paper investigates the potential interactions between perceptions of corruption and press freedom, trust in media, and socioeconomic status. On the aggregate level, this paper finds no statistically significant relationship between perceptions of corruption and external political efficacy. On the individual level, this paper consistently finds a statistically significant relationship between perceptions of corruption and external political efficacy. Moreover, the interactions between perceptions of corruption and trust in media, and socioeconomic status, were generally statistically significant, indicating that the magnitude of the effect that perceptions of corruption have on external efficacy does change based upon one's socioeconomic status and/or trust in media. This paper tests and verifies the philosophical assumptions that perceptions of corruption contribute to external political efficacy, and is therefore a threat to, in particular, democratic legitimacy.
Comparative Politics, Corruption, Democratic Legitimacy, Efficacy, Government Stability, Regime Stability, Political Science
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