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Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

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Abstract Introduction: While corruption exists in both democracies and autocracies, its social consequences may differ fundamentally across regime types. Democratic norms of equality and impartiality make trust highly sensitive to institutional failure. We theorize two mechanisms—normative amplification and representative contagion—by which corruption erodes trust more in democracies. In democraci...
This study presents a compelling case for how democratic institutions, while fostering social trust, also make that trust more vulnerable to corruption perceptions. The strongest version of this narrative is its rigorous empirical demonstration of regime-dependent effects: corruption erodes trust more in democracies due to normative amplification (violation of fairness expectations) and representative contagion (implication of the citizenry). The multilevel analysis and robustness checks lend cr...