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Abstract Critically considering scholarship relating religiosity to ethical behaviour, we contend that religion is systematically related to levels of corruption, and that the nature of this relationship is contingent on the presence of democratic institutions. In democracies, where political institutions are designed to inhibit corrupt conduct, the morality provided by religion is related to attenuated corruption. Conversely, in systems lacking democratic institutions, moral behaviour is not tantamount to staying away from corrupt ways. Accordingly, in non-democratic contexts, religion would not be associated with decreased corruption. Time-series cross-sectional analyses of aggregate data for 129 countries for 12 years, as well as individual level analyses of data from the World Values Surveys, strongly corroborate the predictions of our theory. The correlation of religion with reduced corruption is conditional on the extent to which political institutions are democratic. Keywords: democratic institutionscorruptionreligious freedomdemocracy Notes Peters and Welch, 'Political Corruption in America'. Nas, Price, and Webber, 'A Policy-oriented Theory of Corruption'; Meier and Holbrook, '"I Seen My Opportunities and I Took 'Em": Political Corruption in the American States'; Lederman, Loayza, and Soares, 'Accountability and Corruption: Political Institutions Matter'; Alt and Lassen, 'The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States'; Kunicova and Rose-Ackerman, 'Electoral Rules as Constraints on Corruption'. Powell and Whitten, 'A Cross-national Analysis of Economic Voting'; Tavits, 'Clarity of Responsibility and Corruption'. Golden, 'Electoral Connections'. Heilbrunn, 'Oil and Water? Elite Politicians and Corruption in France'; Tavits, 'Clarity of Responsibility and Corruption'. Persson, Tabellini, and Trebbi, 'Electoral Rules and Corruption'. Chang, 'Electoral Incentives for Political Corruption under Open-List Proportional Representation'. Gerring and Thacker, 'Political Institutions and Corruption'. Chang and Golden, 'Electoral Systems, District Magnitude and Corruption'. Cox and Kousser, 'Turnout and Rural Corruption'. Davis, Camp, and Coleman, 'The Influence of Party Systems on Citizens' Perceptions of Corruption and Electoral Response in Latin America'. Gillespie and Okruhlik, 'The Political Dimension of Corruption Cleanups'. For instance, economic structure and population density (Banerjee, 'A Theory of Misgovernance'; Herbst, States and Power in Africa), colonial legacy (Treisman, 'The Causes of Corruption'), the independence of the media (Peters and Welch, 'The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections'; Giglioli, 'Political Corruption and the Media') and levels of globalization and international integration (Sandholtz and Gray, 'International Integration and National Corruption'; Sandholtz and Koetzle, 'Accounting for Corruption') have also been noted as influencing such violation of norms of public service. Uslaner, Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law. Basabe and Ros, 'Cultural Dimensions and Social Behavior Correlates'. Licht, Goldschmidt, and Schwartz, 'Culture Rules', 665. La Porta et al., 'Trust in Large Organizations'; Putnam, Making Democracy Work; Uslaner, 'Trust and Corruption'. Putnam, Making Democracy Work; Treisman, 'The Causes of Corruption'; Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations; La Porta et al., 'The Quality of Government'; Lipset and Lenz, 'Corruption, Culture and Markets'; Paldam, 'Corruption and Religion'; Basabe and Ros, 'Cultural Dimensions and Social Behavior Correlates'; Licht, Goldschmidt, and Schwartz, 'Culture Rules'. For example, Licht, Goldschmidt, and Schwartz, 'Culture Rules'. Basabe and Ros, 'Cultural Dimensions and Social Behavior Correlates'. Putnam, Making Democracy Work. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 107. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society; Wraith and Simkins, Corruption in Developing Countries; Heidenheimer, Political Corruption. Torgler, 'The Importance of Faith: Tax Morale and Religiosity'. For example, Hoge and Yang, 'Determinants of Religious Giving in American Denominations'; Forbes and Zampelli, 'Religious Giving by Individuals'; Brooks, 'Religious Faith and Charitable Giving'; Chang, 'Religious Giving, Non-religious Giving, and After-life Consumption'. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely, 'The Dishonesty of Honest People'. Fishbach, Friedman, and Kruglanski, 'Leading Us Not Unto Temptation'; Randolph-Seng and Nielsen, 'Honesty: One Effect of Primed Religious Representation'. McKay et al., 'Wrath of God'. Shariff and Norenzayan, 'God is Watching You'; Pichon, Boccato, and Saroglou, 'Nonconscious Influences of Religion on Prosociality'. Randolph-Seng and Nielson, 'Honesty: One Effect of Primed Religious Representation'. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely, 'The Dishonesty of Honest People'. Shariff and Norenzayan, 'God is Watching You'. Randolph-Seng and Nielsen, 'Honesty: One Effect of Primed Religious Representation'. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely, 'The Dishonesty of Honest People'. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality; Gibson, 'The Political Consequences of Intolerance'; Hunsberger, 'Religion and Prejudice'; Karpov, 'Religiosity and Tolerance in the United States and Poland'. These effects are a result of religion's ability to enhance commitment to coalitional identities and strongly differentiate between in- and out-group interests (Atran, 'Genesis of Suicide Terrorism'; Irons, 'Religion as a Hard-To-Fake Sign of Commitment'; Choi and Bowles, 'The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War'). Grim and Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied. Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State; Fox, 'State Religious Exclusivity and Human Rights'. Johnson, Rowatt, and LaBouff, 'Priming Christian Religious Concepts Increases Racial Prejudice'. Ginges, Hansen, and Norenzayan, 'Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks'. Thus, religiosity may enhance altruistic or morally oriented behaviour that may be viewed normatively as negative by an outsider, such as in-group favouritism and out-group prejudice (on parochial altruism see Choi and Bowles, 'The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War'). A typical example that the effect of religion depends on what is viewed as moral in some context is the case of suicide bombing. Such behaviour can be seen as altruistic in some political and social context, and categorically immoral in some other context (see Ginges, Hansen, and Norenzayan, 'Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks', for the positive relationship between religious primes and approval of suicide attacks). Inglehart, 'Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity'; Abramson and Inglehart, Value Change in Global Perspective. Bentham, 'Essay on Political Tactics'; Mill, Considerations on Representative Government. It has been suggested that the British passed on the powerful norm of compliance with established procedures as opposed to personal authority (Treisman, 'The Causes of Corruption'). As a result, this better civil service code is expected to be associated with lower levels of corruption (although this expectation was challenged by some scholars, see for example Pellegrini and Gerlagh, 'Causes of Corruption'), while no similar theory applies to other former colonies. We thus control solely for being a former British colony. In fact, addition of a French colony dummy does not lead to any substantive change in results, and shows a statistically insiginficant coefficient. See details on methods used in data collection and use in academic work on the PRS website at http://www.prsgroup.com. Data were purchased on the website in January 2011. Thompson and Shah, 'Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index'. Data were taken from the RAS website in October 2010 – http://www.thearda.com/ras/. For a more detailed review of the measures, see Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State, chapter 3. See Hadenius and Teorell, 'Cultural and Economic Prerequisites of Democracy', for the advantages of this measure. Dreher, 'Does Globalization Affect Growth?'; Dreher et al., Measuring Globalization. Gleditsch, 'Expanded Trade and GDP Data'. Zorn, 'Generalized Estimating Equation Models for Correlated Data'. Ibid., 475. Treisman, 'The Causes of Corruption'. See, for example, Pellegrini and Gerlagh, 'Causes of Corruption'. See Steenbergen and Jones, 'Modeling Multilevel Data Structures'. The classification of religious denominations used in the analysis is based on Ben-Nun Bloom and Arikan, 'A Two-edged Sword'.
Sommer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.