Democratisation, Economic Development and Corruption in East-Central Europe: A 11-Nation-Study

Abstract: The study explores the relationship between corruption (as measured in a cross-national sample survey) and other indicators such as economic growth, democratisation, institutionalisation, increasing freedom and the informal economy as important indicators of change in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. It was found that corruption perceptions are very highly correlated with economic growth: the higher the level of corruption, the lower the level of growth. It was also the casethe more free and democratic a society was (that is, the more open) the less corruption was perceived. The analysis is based upon a representative sample survey carried out in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, FRY, Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus and Ukraine in 1998 (N=12643).;