Democracy, Support for Democracy and Corruption. A Longitudinal Study of Latin American Countries

Although often unable to satisfactorily solve the problem, democracy (especially enduring democracy) is commonly believed to reduce corruption. Yet, both Transparency International and the World Bank continue to attach a high risk of corruption to Latin American countries: corruption and impunity remain prevalent in the area, despite consolidating democratic regimes and recent anticorruption reforms. Using level of democracy and its endurance, as well as information on the perceptions of democratic performance and corruption obtained from the Latinobarometro, we analyzed a panel data covering the period 2005-2010 in 14 Latin American countries. Our main results show that levels of democracy and citizens' assessment of government fairness have a positive impact on corruption. However, satisfaction towards democracy has the opposite effect: when citizens believed democratic governments and public administrations to be efficient, they also perceived that gains against corruption had significantly decreased.

尽管民主（尤其是稳固存续的民主政体）通常无法圆满解决相关问题，但学界与大众普遍认为其能够抑制腐败。然而，透明国际（Transparency International）与世界银行（World Bank）仍将拉丁美洲国家列为腐败高风险区域：尽管该地区已完成民主政体巩固并推行了近期反腐败改革，但腐败与有罪不罚现象仍普遍存在。本研究借助民主发展水平、民主存续时长，以及从拉美民意调查（Latinobarometro）获取的民主治理表现感知与腐败感知相关信息，对2005至2010年间14个拉丁美洲国家的面板数据集展开了分析。本研究的核心结果显示，民主发展水平以及公民对政府公平性的评价，会对腐败程度产生正向影响。不过，公民对民主的满意度则会产生相反的影响：当民众认为民主政府与公共行政部门具备治理效率时，他们感知到的反腐败成效也会显著下滑。