Democracy may be uniquely sensitive to certain threats. Recent scholarship on democratic backsliding reveals how democracies can erode from within when norms decay and institutions weaken (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). In this article, we identify a specific sensitivity: in democracies, social capital appears to be particularly responsive to corruption.

We theorize that this sensitivity arises from democracy’s foundational commitments to equality and impartiality. These commitments may create two psychological mechanisms that amplify corruption’s impact on social trust. First, normative amplification: in democracies, where universalism is the professed ideal, corruption may signal a breach of the social contract. Citizens may infer that if the institutions meant to embody fairness are compromised, the wider society is untrustworthy. In autocracies, by contrast, where particularism is expected, corruption confirms business as usual rather than signaling societal rot. Second, representative contagion: in democracies, corrupt officials are viewed as emanating from “the people” through elections, potentially implicating the citizenry itself. In autocracies, predatory elites are seen as a distinct class, quarantining interpersonal trust from elite malfeasance. If these mechanisms operate as theorized, then the individual-level psychological process linking corruption perceptions to social distrust should be regime-dependent—strong in democracies, weak in autocracies.

A study by You (2018) provides suggestive evidence for our thesis. Using country-level data on social trust and corruption, and studying democracies and autocracies separately, he demonstrated that more corruption is strongly associated with weaker social trust among democracies—but not among autocracies. This striking pattern is consistent with our theory. However, as the finding was obtained at the aggregate level, it leaves open whether it reflects genuine differences in how individuals psychologically process corruption, or whether it is an artifact of other phenomena.

The present paper aims to provide individual-level evidence for how trust among people in democracies may be especially sensitive to corruption. After replicating You’s country-level findings in more recent data from 62 countries—covering the full spectrum from autocracies like Russia and Iran to stable liberal democracies like New Zealand and Netherlands—we use multilevel modeling to test whether a corresponding individual-level pattern exists. We find that individuals’ perceptions of corruption are associated with lower generalized trust in democracies, while this same individual-level association is substantially weaker or absent in autocracies. These findings suggest an asymmetry in how corruption relates to social trust across regime types. While democracies foster high social trust through their institutions, they may simultaneously make that social capital more vulnerable to perceptions of institutional failure. This may be the price of accountability: the very norms that make democracies function—equality, representation, transparency—may also ensure that institutional failures resonate in citizens’ social worldviews.

Table 1 presents the 62 countries, ordered by the Liberal Democracy Index, with their results for generalized trust and perceived corruption.

Figure 1 tests H1 by showing how country-level generalized trust varies with perceived corruption, separately for democracies and autocracies. In support of H1, the pattern strikingly differs between regime types. Among democracies, there is a strong negative relationship: countries with higher perceived corruption have substantially lower generalized trust. Among autocracies, this relationship is considerably weaker—replicating You's (2018) finding in more recent data and with a theory-driven operationalization of regime type based on the Regimes of the World classification. The alternative analysis using the continuous Liberal Democracy Index as a moderator of the effect of perceived corruption on generalized trust confirms this pattern: the country-level interaction between perceived corruption and liberal democracy is negative (B = −12.07, 95% CI [−22.36, −1.77], p = 0.022).

To test H2 and H3 we now turn to the multilevel analysis, which models how individuals’ corruption perceptions are associated with their trust while allowing this relationship to vary across countries. In support of H2, the main association between perceived corruption and generalized trust is negative (B = −0.12, 95% CI [−0.14, −0.11], p < 0.001). Thus, on average, individuals who perceive higher corruption exhibit lower generalized trust. Additionally, the main effect of liberal democracy is positive (B = 0.79, 95% CI [0.01, 1.56], p = 0.047), indicating that at average levels of perceived corruption, individuals in more democratic countries exhibit higher generalized trust.

In support of H3, the cross-level interaction between perceived corruption and liberal democracy is negative (B = −0.16, 95% CI [−0.22, −0.10], p < 0.001), indicating that the negative association between corruption perceptions and trust is stronger in more democratic countries. Figure 2 illustrates this pattern by plotting country-specific corruption-trust slopes against democratic quality. The slopes are extracted from a model without the cross-level interaction, showing the empirical variation that the interaction term captures. The blue line represents the predicted slope from the main model’s interaction term. Corruption slopes tend to be strongly negative in countries with high democratic quality while being close to zero in countries with low democratic quality.

To translate these results into substantive terms, we calculated predicted probabilities of expressing trust at different levels of corruption perception and democracy, illustrated in Figure 3. For a highly democratic country (90th percentile of the Liberal Democracy Index, the solid line in Figure 3), moving from low perceived corruption (4 on the 1–10 scale, which is the 10th percentile of observed values) to high perceived corruption (10 on the scale, 90th percentile) is associated with a decrease in the probability of trusting others from approximately 34 to 14%. The same change in corruption perception is associated with a much smaller decrease, from approximately 17 to 11% in a highly autocratic country (10th percentile of the Liberal Democracy Index, the dashed line in Figure 3).

We conducted several robustness checks. First, we added economic inequality (Gini coefficient) as a competing cross-level moderator. The democracy × corruption interaction remains essentially unchanged in this model (B = −0.16, 95% CI [−0.22, −0.1], p < 0.001). Similarly, when political polarization was added as a competing moderator, the democracy × corruption interaction remained robust B = −0.16, 95% CI [−0.22, −0.09], p < 0.001. Controlling for country-level social media use and internet penetration, our main finding also persisted (B = −0.18, 95% CI [−0.26, −0.11], p < 0.001).

Second, we tested whether alternative country-level characteristics could serve as moderators. Press freedom showed the same moderating effect to liberal democracy (B = −0.16, 95% CI [−0.22, −0.1], p < 0.001), consistent with its close conceptual and empirical overlap with democracy. Similarly using the Electoral Democracy Index instead of the Liberal Democracy Index, results remained unchanged (B = −0.16, 95% CI [−0.22, −0.1], p < 0.001). State resilience showed a weaker, though directionally consistent, moderating effect (B = −0.02, 95% CI [−0.03, −0.01], p = 0), suggesting that democratic institutions rather than state capacity drive the moderation.

Third, we conducted leave-one-out analyses, re-estimating the model 62 times, each time excluding one country. The cross-level interaction coefficient ranged from −0.17 to −0.15 across these analyses, with no single country driving the results.

This article provides systematic individual-level evidence that the corruption-trust association differs across regime types. Previous research documented this pattern at the aggregate level (You, 2018) but could not determine whether it reflected genuine differences in individual-level psychological processes or merely compositional effects. By measuring country-specific individual-level coefficients and showing they vary systematically with democratic quality, we provide evidence consistent with the view that regime type shapes how corruption perceptions relate to social trust.

Our findings suggest an asymmetry in how corruption relates to trust across regime types. In autocracies, the individual-level association between corruption perceptions and social distrust appears weak or absent, which may help explain how some autocratic regimes combine high corruption with relatively high generalized trust (Figure 1). In democracies, this association is substantially stronger. This pattern suggests that government quality in democracies may matter not merely for administrative efficiency or economic performance, but potentially for the social conditions that support democratic governance. Institutional integrity may affect the social trust that facilitates democratic cooperation—from voluntary tax compliance to electoral participation to civic engagement.

These findings speak to contemporary debates about democratic backsliding and resilience. They suggest that corruption scandals in established democracies should perhaps not be viewed merely as criminal justice matters or administrative failures, but as potential threats to social cohesion. This may help explain a puzzling feature of contemporary politics: why relatively minor corruption scandals can generate significant political crises in established democracies, while autocracies weather far more egregious corruption with limited social consequence. The difference may lie not in the severity of the corruption per se, but in how institutional frameworks shape how citizens interpret and respond to corruption.

Our results also have potential implications for anti-corruption efforts. Standard approaches focus on technical reforms: strengthening audit institutions, improving procurement transparency, raising civil servant salaries, and enhancing criminal enforcement. While these measures may reduce corruption levels, our findings suggest they may be insufficient to address the social consequences of corruption in democracies. If corruption perceptions are indeed associated with reduced social trust in democratic contexts, then anti-corruption strategies in democracies may need to be accompanied by efforts to rebuild and maintain social trust: swift, visible accountability when corruption is discovered; symbolic reaffirmation of democratic equality norms; and frank public discourse about how corruption relates to democratic values.

These findings also suggest that government communication about transparency and anti-corruption efforts may matter for social trust. Because perceptions of corruption, and not merely actual corruption, appear to drive the trust erosion we document, proactive communication about institutional integrity may be valuable. Democratic governments could invest in publicizing accountability measures, successful prosecutions of corrupt officials, and ongoing institutional reforms. Such communication campaigns would not substitute for substantive anti-corruption work but could complement it by ensuring that citizens are aware of their government’s commitment to impartiality. This may be especially important in democracies, where our findings suggest that trust is particularly sensitive to perceived corruption.

More broadly, these findings contribute to understanding potential micro-foundations of regime stability. While much scholarship focuses on how institutions shape elite behavior, our results suggest that institutions may also shape mass psychology in ways relevant for regime dynamics. Democratic institutions may create citizens whose social trust is more responsive to perceived institutional failure than citizens in autocracies.

Ultimately, our findings point to a potential fragility in democracies. If democracy is built on a social contract that requires mutual trust among citizens, and if corruption perceptions undermine that trust more strongly in democratic contexts, then democracies may face a vulnerability that autocracies do not. When citizens perceive corruption, they may lose faith not only in their leaders but also in each other. As democracies worldwide face challenges from polarization, populism, and institutional decay, understanding how institutional context shapes the social consequences of corruption may be important for preserving democratic resilience.