Politicians at higher levels of government are perceived as more corrupt

Abstract

Using an original survey where French citizens were asked to assess corruption at all levels of government, we observe that institutional distance increases perceived corruption. Specifically, municipal governments are perceived as the least corrupt, followed by local governments, senators, deputies, and the national cabinet. The president of the Republic is perceived as slightly less corrupt than the national cabinet, but more corrupt than any other level of government. The relation is robust to alternative specifications, controlling for a series of individual and regional characteristics, and to alternative definitions of the dependent variable. It is not reducible to geographical distance. We observe similar results in other countries. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published