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Universität Potsdam

The effect of political finance on corruption risk in Colombia

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that large sums of money poured into election campaigns are the gateway to corruption. Allegations of the corrupting influence of money in politics and policy are widespread on the national level. Yet, little empirical evidence has advanced the understanding of such a link on the local level, coupled with blurred corruption measures. This master’s thesis tests the effect of campaign finance on public procurement corruption risks in Colombian municipalities, focusing on donations, small donations, and financial disclosure. To that end, I seized publicly disclosed contribution-level data from the 2015 municipal elections and a novel index of institutionalized public procurement corruption risks based upon contract-level data from the near population of local governments. The analysis shows that donations are negatively associated with overall corruption risk, yet they affect specific corruption risks differently. By contrast, small donations seem to correlate positively with direct awarding for a sub-sample of medium-sized municipalities, whereas in their large-sized counterparts the effect of the former on institutionalized corruption is adverse. Finally, financial misreporting is positively linked with market competition restrictions and direct awarding. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for future research and outline a series of policy recommendations.

Degree

thesis:*
Level thesis:degree_level
master
Grantor dc:publisher
Universität Potsdam
Year
2020

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Ceballos, Juan Camilo
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Kohler, Ulrich
  • Bouckaert, Geert

Subjects

dc:subject × 10

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:kobv.de-opus4-uni-potsdam:48758

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Universität Potsdam - Thes
Base URL
publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/oai
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Ceballos, Juan Camilo. The effect of political finance on corruption risk in Colombia. master thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2020. https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/48758