Prisoner in the cage of history? Its influence in understanding the current tolerance of bribery in Romania

Abstract

Our paper examines the influence of the historical legacy regarding the impact of the border of the former Habsburg Empire, the former political membership of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and perceptions about the communist past - in understanding the current tolerance of bribery in Romania, more than 25 years after the fall of communism. We started from an existing background suggesting that in the aftermath of the fall of communism, Romania underwent significant socio-economic changes, with persisting regional disparities accentuated by historical and cultural legacies. Using representative data from the European and World Values Survey joint dataset v.2.0, other relevant sources (Public Opinion Barometer from 2000 and 2007), variable selection and analysis methods based on DK/NA value treatment, binary derivations, the LASSO pack in Stata 17.0 together with different types of regressions including OLS, binary and ordered logistic ones, cross-validations both random and based on well established criteria (mixed-effects modeling), and collinearity removal techniques based on maximum accepted values of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF), the results highlight that respondents from certain Romanian macro-regions that experienced higher levels of membership in the PCR and positive views about communism are less likely to be tolerant of bribery. It appears that if the region of residence was part of the former Habsburg Empire, current intentions for bribery are higher. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the propensity to bribe is negatively affected by current macro elements, such as higher crime levels, material deprivation, urban connectivity or lower levels of migration abroad, and left-wing voting preferences.