Anticorruption effects of information communication and technology (ICT) and social capital
Open Access
- 1 March 2009
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in International Review of Administrative Sciences
- Vol. 75 (1), 99-116
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852308099508
Abstract
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.Keywords
This publication has 39 references indexed in Scilit:
- The multiple facets of social capitalEuropean Journal of Political Economy, 2006
- E-government II. Best practices for digital governmentBulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2005
- DIGITAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS EFFECTIVENESS IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORMPublic Management Review, 2005
- Shaping the Web of Civic Participation: Civil Society Websites in Eastern EuropeJournal of Public Policy, 2005
- Interaction between States and Citizens in the Age of the Internet: “e‐Government” in the United States, Britain, and the European UnionGovernance, 2003
- Social Capital: Prospects for a New ConceptAcademy of Management Review, 2002
- Social Implications of the InternetAnnual Review of Sociology, 2001
- The Contingent Value of Social CapitalAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1997
- Visions of Corruption Control and the Evolution of American Public AdministrationPublic Administration Review, 1994
- Social Capital in the Creation of Human CapitalAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1988