Perception of civil service corruption and trust in political institutions in Brazil.

Trust in political institutions represents a central facet of political legitimacy in a democracy. A vast literature suggests that the local perception of corruption lowers trust in political institutions in different research settings. Building upon this literature, we explore whether the perception of civil service corruption and trust in political institutions are inversely associated in Brazil—a developing country significantly affected by corruption scandals—using nationally representative survey data. We find evidence of this association using ordinary least squares regression models that treat perception of civil service corruption as an exogenous variable while accounting for the impact of other determinants of political trust. However, these results could be affected by endogeneity bias due to simultaneous causation: not only does a higher perception of corruption decrease trust in political institutions, but lower levels of trust in political institutions also increase the perception of corruption. We find that this inverse association is significantly larger when we treat perception of civil service corruption as an endogenous variable using endogenous binary‐variable regression models. Political and civil society leaders in Brazil should continually participate in the development of effective accountability strategies for curbing corruption in order to challenge the vicious circle of corruption and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]