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Measuring Public Corruption in the American States: A Survey of State House Reporters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Richard T. Boylan  and
Cheryl X. Long
Richard T. Boylan
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
Cheryl X. Long
Affiliation:
Colgate University
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Abstract

We use a survey of State House reporters to measure corruption in state government and assess the priority federal prosecutors place on corruption investigations. The reliability and validity of the corruption measures are assessed, as are the relationships among corruption level, federal prosecutorial effort, and the number of federal prosecutions. Federal corruption prosecutions are positively correlated with both corruption and prosecutorial effort. Hence, we argue that federal prosecution data provide a potentially biased and unreliable measure of state public corruption.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , Winter 2003 , pp. 420 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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