Sexual Forms of Corruption: How to Expand Research in a Sensitive Area

• In Event: Conceptualizing Sexual Corruption and Sextortion

Abstract

There is increasing attention among advocacy organizations about the urgent problem of sextortion and other ways in which sexual forms of corruption hurts vulnerable people. Yet, scholarly understandings of this challenge are, conceptually and empirically, underdeveloped. In this Working Paper, we make three contributions: First, we elaborate on the concept and discuss how to define sextortion, i.e., what it is and what it is not. Towards that aim, we trace the use and evolution of the concept and present empirical illustrations of where, in which sectors, the phenomenon thus far has been detected. Second, we analyze the first cross-national survey that includes questionnaire items gauging sextortion. This survey helps to disentangle where, geographically, the problem is prevalent and what individual factors that seem to increase the risk of experience sextortion. Third, we discuss a future research agenda on this theme and provide suggestions on what research questions this vein of study should be posing. Systematic empirical studies are scant, and thus there is little knowledge about the scope of the phenomenon. Therefore, we propose, as a next step, more of theoretically informed survey research. We conclude by discussing potential recommendations for policy that would come out from such renewed research.

In short, when analyzing the correlation between the sextortion measures and twelve other perception-based indicators on corruption in the survey, we see that none of these items seem to be highly associated. In detail, few of the twelve corruption variables included correlate with the two items on sextortion in the survey on more than a Pearson correlation coefficient of about 0.1. Whereas some of these corruption items – such as those measuring attitudes about corruption among ‘government officials’ and ‘local government officials’ – have a rather high correlation between each other, it seems that the responses on sexual forms of corruption empirically follow a different pattern. Potentially, this can be interpreted as meaning that sextortion and other forms of corruption are separate phenomena – the existence of one form does not necessarily go hand in hand with the existence of the other form.

Authors

• Lena Wangnerud, University of Gothenburg

• Aksel Sundström, Department for Political Science, the Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg