It takes two to tango: complementarity of bonding and bridging trust in alleviating corruption in cities

ABSTRACT

Petty administrative corruption (bribery) can be seen as a regional phenomenon and investigated in the spatial context. By applying Heckman selection models with instrumenting to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) data, it is found that larger cities appear more prone to corruption. However, capital cities exhibit lower corruption, owing to differences in social and political structures and government accountability. Furthermore, the paper illustrates the importance of the meso-level social environment, exploring complementarity between bridging (across broader local society by institutional trust) and bonding trust (within more embedded communities) in alleviating bribery.

KEYWORDS:

• corruption
• city
• civic capital
• institutional trust
• bonding
• bridging

JEL:

• D2
• D73
• P25
• P52

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See https://www.transparency.org/what-is-corruption#define.

2. We follow Rodríguez-Pose and Storper (2006) in considering institutional trust and generalized trust as closely related, mutually dependent phenomena, focusing on the former. Similar to them, Guiso et al. (2010) emphasize trust as a key component of ‘civic capital’. An alternative view is presented by Newton and Zmerli (2011), who see bonding trust as a necessary but not sufficient condition of generalized trust, and the latter as a prerequisite of institutional trust.

3. The results are available from the authors upon request.

4. The results are available from the authors upon request.