Politics, Corruption, and Political Culture

Using as a data base 441 American state legislators, the authors explore the relationship of state political cultures to legislative attitudes toward corruption. Three measures of corruption are exammed: perception of acts as being corrupt, support for other officials engaged in corrupt acts, and perceived frequency of corruption m one's own state legislature. After controlling for other factors thought to be important in explaining political corruption, the authors find that compared to other legislators, legislators from states identified as "moralistic" are less tolerant of corruption and perceive that it is lower in frequency.