Corruption and Human Rights

Abstract

This paper explores the empirical relationships between corruption and human rights using extant quantitative measures for a sample of 186 countries for the period 1980 to 2004. It uses three measures of corruption and 17 measures of human rights, which are examined using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analysis and methods of estimation. The paper argues that some measures of corruption and human rights are better than others based on an assessment of their validity, reliability and temporal and spatial coverage. The statistical analysis shows that more corrupt countries have worse records at protecting human rights, even after controlling for other explanatory variables, such as the level of democracy, national income, population size, government consumption, and regional control variables. The implications of these findings for advocacy strategies are then addressed