Female Representation and Corruption: A Quantitative Study on the Association Between Female Representation and Corruption within Swedish Municipalities

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines the relationship between gender and corruption within Swedish municipalities. While Sweden is frequently associated with honest governance, concerns regarding corruption have increased in recent years, particularly in municipalities due to their corruption-prone operations. Previous research remains divided on whether women reduce corruption or if the relationship is better explained by institutional and contextual factors, especially within democratic settings. This study contributes to the academic discourse by examining whether higher levels of female representation correlate with lower levels of perceived and experienced corruption in both the legislative and bureaucratic arenas of municipal governments. Two theoretical frameworks, the conditional and opportunity perspectives, are utilized to develop competing hypotheses. Sweden, and by extension its municipalities, constitutes a most- and least-likely case for the respective theoretical perspectives. This study applies Fixed Effects models to data from three large-scale surveys across three mandate periods to test the hypotheses. Additionally, Random Effects and Pooled Regression models are employed to determine the robustness of the results. The empirical findings indicate that higher female representation in the previous mandate period is significantly and negatively associated with corruption in the subsequent period, thus lending support to the conditional perspective.