Studying Abroad and Corruption Attitudes: Evidence from Ukraine and Georgia

• In Event: Anti-Corruption Politics and Reactionary Populism

Abstract

For students from regions in which corruption is widespread, cross-cultural immersion in a culture where corruption is not the norm can be a catalyst for political entrepreneurship upon return to one’s home country. Study abroad programs therefore may have the potential to disrupt deeply entrenched social norms that underlie the corruption traps – self-sustaining expectations that corruption is unavoidable because “everyone does it” – that plague many countries in Eurasia and beyond. Drawing on a variant of a regression discontinuity design, this study analyzes the impact of a year of studying abroad in the United States on the corruption attitudes of high school students from Ukraine and Georgia.

Author

• Jordan Luc Gans-Morse, Northwestern University