Acta academica karviniensia 2015, 15(2):82-94 | DOI: 10.25142/aak.2015.020

REDUCTION OF CORRUPTION BY LIMITING THE DISCRETION OF OFFICIALS

Veronika Linhartová

Univerzita Pardubice, Fakulta ekonomicko-správní, Studentská 95, 532 10 Pardubice, Email:veronika.linhartova@upce.cz

Fighting corruption is very challenging and difficult. Due to the fact that bribery and other forms of corruption are illegal practices in most countries, the actors of corruption are trying to hide their behavior and revelation of corruption is almost impossible. The most discussed is corruption in the public sector, because the consequences of such abuse of public power hit the broad mass of taxpayers and the state in general. For this reason efforts to reduce corruption are focused mainly on public administration. For reducing the interaction between officials and the public could be use e-government methods as a possible way to reduce corruption. The literature focused on e-government methods in relation to corruption suggests that electronic service delivery can reduce corruption by minimizing the interactions with officials, accelerating decisions and reducing human errors. This paper is focused on the potential role of e-government in reducing the level of corruption in the country. Specifically, this paper examines the impact of the use of e-government methods on the level of corruption in 117 countries all over the world.

Keywords: corruption, Corruption Perception Index, Development Index, discretion, E-Government, public officials

JEL classification: D73, H11

Received: March 10, 2015; Accepted: September 23, 2015; Published: June 30, 2015  Show citation