Do political power shifts reduce corruption in Korean local governments?

Abstract Previous studies have discussed the effects of electoral competition on corruption, but only a few explored the effects of political power shifts – the results of electoral competition. To fill the gap, this study tests hypotheses that three types of political power shifts (the shifts of individual local government heads, local government ruling party, and local council majority) reduce the corruption (overall, external, and internal), with a panel data set of 226 Korean local governments. The empirical study shows that only shifts in the local government head reduce internal corruption. The other dependent and independent variables do not have any significant relationships. This can be because of structural matters of Korean local politics such as strong mayor-weak council and the closed local elite networks.