1 Democracy and Corruption: A Longitudinal Study of Latin America Davide Grassi, Università degli Studi di Torino Vincenzo Memoli, Università degli Studi di Catania Abstract Although often unable to satisfactorily solve the problem, democracy (especially enduring democracy) is commonly believed to reduce corruption. Yet, both Transparency International and World Bank continue to attach a high risk of corruption to Latin American countries: corruption and impunity remain prevalent in the area, despite consolidating democratic regimes and recent anticorruption reforms. Using level of democracy and its duration, as well as some information on the perception of corruption obtained from the Latinobarometro, we analyzed a panel data covering the period 2005-2009 in 18 Latin American countries. Our main results show that democratic levels have no clear impact on corruption, while democratic history does, but only after a certain period. Citizens’ trust towards government is also strongly associated to corruption levels: in particular, whenever citizens perceive government and the public administration to be inefficient and arbitrary, their perception of gains against corruption significantly decreases. Introduction Corruption - usually defined as a violation of the norms of public office for personal gain (Nye 1967) - has been known to hamper economic growth, to weaken the quality of governance and to reduce the level of trust that citizens put in political institutions (Mauro, 1995; Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi, 2006; Anderson and Tverdova, (2003). Although some scholar claim that corruption is functional to the process of development (Heidenheimer and Johnston 2002; Williams 2001), its practices usually take place in secret and provide privileged access to government officials for some parties, thus undermining fundamental principles of democratic governance, such as the openness and equality of the political system (Sandholtz and Koetzle, 2000). 1 As a consequence, scholars have assigned great importance to uncover the potential determinants of corruption. In our study, we offer an articulated definition of democracy, by looking both at democracy levels and at the duration of democratic regimes and take into account the interaction between these dimensions. We also believe that the support for democracyarticulated individually by citizens is as important to determine the perceptions of domestic corruption as the aggregated evaluation of democratic governments submitted by specialists: whether democracy is well established or not, the current satisfaction regarding the efficiency and impartiality of government strongly affects the perceptions of the honesty or corruption of state servants. We claim that this further variable is a useful factor in explaining changes in perceptions of corruption at the national level and that it should consistently be used in analyses of this kind. Thus, 1 A classic statement praises corruption as an important tool if the goal is to achieve stable political development (Huntington, 1968: 69). In the same vein, Merton (1957) mostly regarded it as the "grease" that helps the bureaucracy function in developing countries and, in so doing, increases citizens’ loyalty.