Do Public Corruption Convictions Influence Citizens’ Trust in Government? The Answer Might Not Be a Simple Yes or No

Abstract

The influence of corruption convictions on government trust is complicated. On one hand, they may reflect the severity of corruption in a jurisdiction. On the other hand, they might indicate the degree of anticorruption efforts. Existing literature has suggested the severity of corruption’s negative effects and the positive effect of anticorruption efforts on institutional trust. This research synthesized existing studies, identified the intellectual puzzle in the literature, and developed open hypotheses to investigate the way in which corruption convictions systematically affect citizens’ trust in government. State-level panel data merged from different sources were used for the empirical analyses. The results showed a positive influence of corruption convictions on public trust in government.