Diverse Democracies, Divergent Corruption: Examining the Impact of Democratic Governance Models in Curbing Corruption

This study examined the impact of various democratic models on regime corruption. This study focuses on four types of democracy: liberal, deliberative, participatory, and egalitarian. Principal component regression was conducted on data from 183 countries spanning the period 1900–2022. The results show that liberal democracy significantly reduces regime corruption, suggesting that higher levels of liberal democratic values effectively curb it. The results indicate that there is no significant relationship between deliberative democracy and regime corruption, suggesting that deliberations do not directly influence corruption. Contrary to expectations, participatory democracy exhibited a significantly positive relationship with regime corruption, implying that corrupt actors might exploit vulnerabilities inherent in participatory mechanisms. Therefore, although participatory processes are essential for democratic engagement, they must be carefully designed and managed to prevent their misuse. On the other hand, egalitarian democracy shows a significantly negative relationship with corruption, emphasizing the importance of equal opportunities to curb corruption within democracies. These findings underscore the need to examine democratic governance from a more nuanced perspective. Liberal and egalitarian values are critical in developing effective anticorruption strategies.