When state-level institutions cannot tell the whole story: An inquiry into municipal variations in quality of government

The lion's share of comparative research on corruption, good governance, and quality of government (QoG) has been cross-country. However, a growing body of literature has begun to explore within-country variations observed at the subnational level regarding corruption and social trust. The existence of such variations implies that state-level institutions are not capable of telling the entire story and that quality of subnational-level institutions might be important determinants of within-country variations regarding, for instance, trust. This article delves into the Swedish case, an egalitarian country that scores high in international indices on lack of corruption and social trust; hence, a least likely case of subnational variations in both QoG and trust. Using two unique data sets, we find variations in both municipal QoG and social trust. In line with theory, we find that local QoG is associated with individual levels of community trust. This finding-in a low-corrupt, high-trust egalitarian society-strengthens the universality of the QoG-perspective.

Automated summary

The study found that even in a low-corrupt, high-trust egalitarian society like Sweden, there are variations in local government quality and social trust. Therefore, the quality of subnational-level institutions may be an important factor in shaping within-country variations.