Determinants of Corruption - a Study of Zambian Ministries

Abstract: Corruption is indisputably an immense obstacle for many developing countries in their endeavor to prosper economically. Zambia, a peaceful, politically stable democracy is still facing many of the problems connected with corruption. Corruption has so far mostly been measured on a state-level, but in our thesis we narrow the field of investigation down to the ministry-level. We use questionnaires to get a controlled sample and a different perspective. Our questionnaires are directed to the officials and bureaucrats working at the headquarters of each of the twenty-one ministries in Zambia. With public choice as theoretical background we investigate various variables that we predict can be related to corruption. Our findings show significant correlation between the amount of low paid employees and corruption and the level of social trust and corruption, where the first proved to be the stronger correlation. More exactly we manage to show that the lower the share of low paid ministry officials, the higher the level of the perceived corruption will be, and the higher the level of social trust is, the lower the level of perceived corruption is. However, there is reason to continue the research to establish the determinants of corruption. This could preferably be done with greater data samples and more qualitative researches.