Corruption perceptions and political trust : Political trust as a cognitive shortcut for corruption perceptions

Sammanfattning

Previous research has suggested that individuals’ corruption perceptions are determined by a number of socioeconomic, cultural and demographic characteristics. Less research has been performed on how attitudes affect these perceptions, but some findings lead us to believe that political trust functions as a mental shortcut when individuals estimate corruption levels in their countries. Moreover, there are indications that high perceived corruption levels among residents in a country might in itself increase actual corruption rates. To learn more about what determines corruption perceptions, this paper aims to analyse the effect of political trust on individuals’ corruption perceptions. It employs ordinary least squares (OLS) to fit bivariate and multivariate regression models on individual-level World Values Survey data and national-level data on CPI and GDP. The study finds a significant association between political trust and corruption perceptions across multiple model specifications. The results provide support for the hypothesis that political trust functions as a mental shortcut, but many alternative interpretations exist as well.