Electoral Systems an Corruption

Recently, many scholars have tried to explain how electoral systems are linked to corruption. Several theories emerged but still no consensus has been reached. With a dataset of about 50 democratic countries considered over 10 years we try to understand which of the effects highlighted in the theoretical literature dominates. The results tend to show that larger voting districts (characterized by lower barriers to entry) are associated with less corruption, whereas closed lists tend to be associated with more. The latter effect is nevertheless not robust. In aggregate, we find that majoritarian systems tend to be associated to higher levels of corruption than proportional representations. An additional finding is that presidential regimes tend to be associated with more corruption than parliamentary ones.