The price of accountability: corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

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 democracies, corruption violates core fairness norms and implicates the citizenry that elected corrupt officials. In autocracies, corruption is expected and elites are seen as separate from ordinary citizens. Methods To test this theory, we perform multilevel analysis of data from 62 countries combining individual-level survey responses with country-level democratic quality indicators. Results We first demonstrate that perceiving corruption predicts lower generalized trust almost universally across individuals. We then show this individual-level psychological mechanism is considerably stronger in democracies than in autocracies, even controlling for inequality and country-level corruption. Discussion These findings reveal an asymmetric vulnerability: the accountability structures that make democracies function also make their social capital fragile. This has important implications for understanding democratic resilience, as corruption threatens the social trust necessary for democratic cooperation differently across regime types.