Proceedings of the 16th International Academic Conference, Amsterdam

CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF CORRUPTION AND BRIBERY: A CROSS-COUNTRY COMPARISON

MEHMET OKAN TAŞAR, SAVAŞ ÇEVIK

Abstract:

Corruption and bribery are observed to be a common behavior not only in developing or transition economies also for all countries. Bribery is emerging as related to the societies’ economic, political or cultural structures. Therefore, the factors that determine the behavior of bribery are also emerging as a versatile and multi-dimensional. However, even if bribery and corruption cases arise from various factors, the economic consequences of both actions impose significant costs and undermine the society’s cultural structure. In this paper, generally the corruption and especially the bribery process are analyzed by the factors determining this process. The study examines the linkages between the bribery behavior and the society’s cultural institutions and structures. Thus, it aims at revealing the cultural determinants of corruption and bribery behavior. For this purpose, the study firstly makes cross-country comparisons through the corruption perception index the data from Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators. Then, it is considered correlations and associations between the corruptions scores of the countries the countries’ cultural values and structures through data which is obtained from the World Value Survey (WVS) and the European Value Survey (EVS). WVS and EVS have large sets of variables to develop indexes for cultural classifications at its various dimensions. Thus, it can be analyzed the corruption scores of countries together predictors on cultural characteristics which is obtained from WVS/EVS at aggregated level, and on other macro level economic factors through cross-section regressions. The study also seeks to determine the predictors of bribery behavior at micro level using Turkey data of WVS. The WVS contains a question on how much the individuals tolerate the bribery. In this section, the study uses the bribery acceptance of individuals as a dependent variable, and estimates the effect of determinants as individual values, attitudes and demographic variables.

Keywords: Bribery, Corruption, Cultural determinants, World Value Survey, Corruption Perceptions Index, Developing Countries.

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2015.016.069

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