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Anticorruption effects of information communication and technology (ICT) and social capital

Department of Public Administration and Policy, University at Albany - SUNY, USA

Tae Ho Eom

Department of Public Administration, Yonsei University, Korea, theom{at}yonsei.ac.kr

This article examines the argument that Information Communication and Technology (ICT) and social capital serve as major factors to reduce corruption. ICT has the potential to reduce unnecessary human intervention in government work processes, thus reducing the need to monitor corrupt behavior. Furthermore, citizens living in a society with a high level of social capital are more likely to become actively involved in the political decision-making process, increasing the likelihood that public employees' corrupt behaviors will be exposed to the densely connected public. We also examined the relationship between social capital and ICT. Our statistical analysis, which used panels of datasets obtained from various sources, revealed that (1) ICT is an effective tool for reducing corruption; (2) social capital also has positive effects on anti-corruption, but various dimensions of social capital may have different impacts; and (3) the relationship between social capital and ICT is inconclusive.

Points for practitioners The theoretical model and empirical results of this article shed light on the potential impacts of ICT on corruption, thereby providing practitioners with the opportunity to consider ICT as a useful and practical policy tool for reducing corruption in addition to traditional methods, i.e. administrative reform and law enforcement. Further, although our research findings on the relationship between ICT and social capital were inconclusive, social capital was found to have anticorruption effects independent of ICT, which implies that policies designed to foster trust networks in a society can contribute to the reduction of corruption.

Key Words: corruption • e-government • e-participation • information communication technology (ICT) • international panel data • social capital • transparency

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 75, No. 1, 99-116 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0020852308099508


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