Corruption and economic crisis, a poisonous combination: understanding process-outcome interactions in the explanation of public support for democracy

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When corruption investigations come to nothing: A natural experiment on trust in courts

Publication . Magalhães, Pedro C.

Corruption scandals and their investigation have been shown to undermine support not only for the allegedly involved public officials but also for political actors and institutions more generally. However, we know little about what happens when those investigations end up failing to result in punishments. Is citizens' trust in the legal authorities in charge of prosecuting and punishing corruption also undermined? Do those effects spill over to political actors, institutions, and even the political regime? We address these questions by taking advantage of an April 2021 judicial decision to drop corruption charges against former Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates during the fieldwork of a public opinion survey. We show that the decision had a substantial negative impact on public trust in the courts. Furthermore, although political trust was not immediately affected, its overall levels also became lower in comparison to periods before the judicial decision, suggesting a spillover effect.

2024Journal article

Open access

A Scoping Review on Perception-Based Definitions and Measurements of Corruption

Publication . Gouvêa Maciel, G.; Magalhães, Pedro C.; Sousa, Luis de; Pinto, Isabel R.; Clemente, Felippe

Studies on perceptions of corruption have grown in recent years but are still struggling with several conceptual and measurement issues. This scoping review provides an analysis of the peer-reviewed literature on perception-based corruption. From a total of 1,374 articles surveyed, ninety ultimately met inclusion criteria. We found two main quantifiable trends when exploring our sample: publications in high-impact journals were slow in addressing perception-based corruption, and perceptions of corruption are of interest not only to political science and sociology but to other disciplinary traditions. In more qualitative terms, we observe that the explicit or implicit definitions of “corruption” behind these studies tend to fall into two categories: corruption as a “Deviant Process” or as a “Deviant Outcome,” while measurements can be typified in a two-dimensional scheme: “Sociotropic” vs. “Egocentric” and “Generic” vs. “Specific.” Most measurement approaches surveyed tend to use a “deviant process” definition, whereas the measurement of corruption as a “deviant outcome” still lacks development. This might represent a challenge for future research focusing on the social understanding of corruption in various contexts (administrative, organizational, political, economic, legal, etc.).

2024Journal article

Open access

The more I see it the less I want it: sociotropic corruption and (in)tolerance towards corruption in contexts of perceived economic crisis

Publication . Costa-Lopes, Rui; Do Bú, Emerson Araújo; Madeira, Filipa; Pinto, Isabel R.

Whether the widespread perception of corruption is associated with lower or higher tolerance towards corrupt practices remains an important research question. Considering that, in economic downturns, citizens may become particularly sensitive to corruption, this paper goes further by exploring how the relationship between perceived sociotropic corruption and tolerance towards corruption may be moderated by perceptions of economic crisis. Findings from Study 1 with a representative sample of the Portuguese population (N = 1020) indicate that the higher the perceived sociotropic corruption, the lower the tolerance for corruption and that the negative relationship between sociotropic corruption and tolerance for corruption is strengthened by an economic crisis perception. Study 2 (N = 120) experimentally explored these findings and provided preliminary evidence of greater intolerance towards corruption under high sociotropic corruption, especially when the economic crisis perception is salient. These results show how the salience of corruption practices might improve adherence to integrity normative expectations and how contextual factors might impact this process.

2025Journal article

Restricted access

Making sense of ‘tolerance towards corruption’ through power, public ethics, and injustice: a perception-based study with citizens and politicians in Portugal

Publication . Gouvêa Maciel, G.

This article delves into the dynamics of power, public ethics, and injustice to explain the tolerance towards types of corruption that challenge democracy and go far beyond the most discussed illegal ‘Market’ aspects. The aim is to explore the patterns of the more ‘Parochial’ aspects of reciprocity and kinship and the ‘Institutional’ aspects of manipulating the norms and purposes of institutions that cor ruption has. Using the results of two original surveys conducted simultaneously (between October 2020 and April 2021), in which citizens and politicians in Portugal were asked about eleven potentially corrupt behaviours, this study concludes that it is the normalisation of parochialism in power relations that has been indirectly promoting the maintenance of institutional mechanisms that reinforce exclusion and the adoption of unethical behaviours to restore a sense of equality. It is argued that the antidote to Tolerance towards Corruption (TtC) consists of a formula that includes the constant improvement of the regulation of ethics in public life and pub lic policies capable of mitigating the injustices associated with deprivation.

2025Journal article

Open access

Knowledge of official ethical standards and tolerance towards corruption: An exploratory study

Publication . Sousa, Luis de; Clemente, Felippe; Calca, Patrícia

Corruption is often defined as a deviant conduct from established legal and formal norms and expected ways of behaving in the exercise of official duties and the discharge of official responsibilities. Readiness to tolerate corruption will hinge primarily upon the evaluator’s understanding of what those ethical standards are. This means that citizens’ willingness to accept corruption as something “normal” to the functioning of democracy or “beneficial” to economic development is likely to be affected by how knowledgeable they are about the ethical standards of governing public office. Such knowledge can be instilled by academic and experiential learning. So, we question to what extent citizens’ knowledge of official ethical standards affect their tolerance towards corruption? Based on new individual level data collected from six focus groups conducted in Portugal, we show a possible negative association between the appropriate knowledge of official ethical standards and tolerance towards corruption. The results are exploratory, but sufficiently interesting to test our hypothesis with a larger sample.

2022Journal article

Open access