Democracy and corruption

It’s been revised the arguments linking democracy to the control of corruption starting from the often heard call for a “strong man”, an autocrat that could give a country the needed stability and that could take the decisions required to get rid of corruption. Clearly, the call does not survive empirical scrutiny. Rather, the evidence shows a robust negative relationship between level of corruption and level of democracy. However, the evidence also shows that the potential of democracy in fighting corruption hinges upon a series of conditions, and that the mere existence of formal political competition through regular elections on its own is not enough.