Forum on Public Policy Human Freedoms and Public Corruption around the World: Demonstration of a Curvilinear Relationship

Two enduring human concerns throughout the world are (a) the various freedoms enjoyed (or not enjoyed) by citizens of different nations, and (b) the presence or absence of corruption among public officials and politicians of those same countries. This paper explores the relationship between human freedoms and corruption in national public life around the globe. A common conception of the relationship between human freedoms and corruption is that increasing freedoms create more opportunities for corruption. A competing hypothesis is that freedoms, by providing greater opportunities for personal choice, action, responsibility, and accountability, decrease corruption. A third proposition ⎯ examined in this paper ⎯ posits a curvilinear relationship, of the cubic form, between freedoms and corruption. Specifically, at low levels of human freedoms, corruption will increase as freedoms increase; at moderate to moderately high levels of freedoms, corruption will decrease as freedoms increase; and at very high levels of freedoms, a threshold point will be reached, beyond which corruption will increase. This proposition is tested using polynomial regression analysis, with corruption as the dependent variable and human freedoms as the independent variable. Corruption is gauged with the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International. Human freedoms are measured with an index created by factor analyzing various published measures of economic, political/civil, cultural, and religious freedoms. Results support the curvilinear hypothesis, and implications and limitations of those results are discussed. 1