Political culture helps define the boundaries of permissible political action. Thus, it should affect the amounts and types of political corruption occurring in political systems, as well as responses to corruption when it is discovered. This article compares the distribution of corruption convictions among federal judicial districts over a three-year period to social and political characteristics of the districts, and to scaled measures of Elazar's moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic political subcultures. Nationally, strong moralistic subcultures and high voter turnouts are associated with numerous convictions, both before and after district population is controlled. Analysis of regional patterns reveals a different model in the South, however, one suggesting ideas about the dynamics of traditionalistic politics. Corruption, and the impact of federal laws against it, are best understood within their political and cultural settings.
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Michael Johnston (1983) studied this question.