Corruption and Political Decay: Evidence from Bolivia

This paper studies the impact of corruption victimization on anti-government protest. It is argued that two features of corruption victimization are relevant for understanding its impact: its intensity level and the clarity of responsibility of the ruling government. Drawing upon survey data from the 2004 Bolivia Democracy Audit, the paper finds that low levels of exposure to corruption generally do not induce a greater inclination to participate in anti-government protest behavior than no exposure at all, whereas high levels of exposure do exert a positive and substantively large impact on protest. Moreover, the paper shows that the institutional affiliations of the perpetrators of corruption are crucially important in understanding how citizens react to their victimization. When perpetrators are linked to the ruling government through patronage networks (i.e., clarity of responsibility is high), victimization is much more likely to produce anti-government protest than when no such link is present.