This deliverable provides an in-depth review of corruption risk indicators for the fouruse cases of FALCON: a) public procurement, b) sanctions against kleptocrats and oligarchs, c)border corruption and d) conflicts of interest involving politically exposed persons. Thechapters also provide an overview of the main data sources required to calculate the riskindicators and outline methods for validating use case specific indicators while providingexamples of country-specific validation of quantitative or qualitative indicators where dataallows.

This report, Deliverable 2.3 of the FALCON project, analyses the impacts of variousforms of corruption, focusing on public procurement, sanctions, and border corruption. Ithighlights the economic inefficiencies caused by corruption in public procurement, the mixedeffectiveness of sanctions, and the variation of economic losses due to border corruption. Thereport provides empirical evidence in form of case studies and statistical analysis to estimatethese impacts and quantify the losses associated with corruption. The findings underscore thecritical need for effective anti-corruption measures due to direct effect corruption has oneffective distribution of public resources.

This study investigates the geographical polarisation of voting behaviour in Sweden by analysing historical data from Swedish parliamentary elections spanning from 1976 to 2022. We explore both national and intra-municipal trends to assess voting patterns in urban and rural areas across Sweden and within municipalities. Contrary to international trends and several theoretical predictions, our results indicate a general decrease in the urban-rural voting gap over time, accompanied by specific shifts in party support dynamics. However, in the latest elections, we identify a marked increase in support for the Sweden Democrats in rural compared to urban areas. We conclude by discussing the potential long-term implications of these trends for Swedish politics. This research enhances our understanding of the complexities and evolution of geographical polarisation in Sweden and provides insights into broader global patterns of political cleavages.

Researchers have repeatedly found that corruption has a wide range of negative consequences, not least in developing countries where corruption typically constitutes an endemic part of people’s lives. However, much less is known about the prevalence and effects of corruption in mature democracies. While such states regularly find themselves at the top of anti-corruption rankings, they are not immune to corruption scandals related to, for instance, recruitment to public positions, procurement, the issuance of permits, etcetera.

Against this backdrop, some scholars have argued that the size of the corruption problem in mature democracies may be underestimated. One common and underlying argument is that corruption in these settings takes on hidden and ‘sophisticated’ forms that are difficult to expose, hard to prosecute, and therefore, difficult to measure. Accordingly, corruption in mature democracies has largely been downplayed or overlooked, and hence constitutes a blind spot for most practitioners and corruption scholars. That said, when scholars have paid attention to corruption in mature democracies, the tendency has been to focus on theoretical discussions rather than rigorous empirical research. As a result of measurement problems and data limitations, scholars have found it difficult to assess the extent of corruption in settings characterised by more sophisticated forms of corruption.

As a means of addressing this research gap, the overarching purpose of this thesis is to apply research strategies that allow us to quantify the prevalence and potential effects of corruption risks at the micro level in the context of a mature democracy – Sweden. This is achieved by employing large-scale administrative data combined with statistical methods that measure corruption risks at the granular level of individuals, firms, and processes. I maintain that the approaches employed in the thesis have at least two advantages vis-á-vis the lion’s share of existing corruption research: 1) it makes it possible to detect corruption risks in areas where the presence of corruption has previously been downplayed or unknown; and 2) it estimates corruption risks at the micro level, which allows for a more granular understanding of variations in corruption risks, between both municipalities and organisations.

Ultimately, the results of the thesis show the prevalence of corruption risks in the Swedish public sector in the areas of recruitment to public sector jobs, the rental housing market, and public procurement. Moreover, the thesis also shows that perceived corruption in Swedish municipalities is associated with lower levels of entrepreneurship. In line with a decent amount of previous research, the thesis’s main findings support the notion that subnational variations in institutional quality and impartiality are relevant even in mature democracies.

Previous research has shown that corruption risks may distort market incentives in high-risk contexts. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the potential impact of corruption in settings characterized by low corruption and high-quality institutions. Against that background, this paper delves deeper into the alleged consequences of corruption by examining the link between corruption risks in public procurement and the profitability of firms in the Swedish construction industry. We introduce a novel measure of corruption risk based on the share of single bidder contracts that a firm has won. Validity analysis confirms that our measure is correlated with an alternative corruption measure and local tender winners. Our results reveal that firms that win many single bidder contracts have higher profitability than other firms in the sector: 10 percentage points higher single bidding rate firms have a 0.2–0.6-percentage-point higher sales margin. The findings underscore that public procurement corruption risks distort markets and economic incentives, and that this risk is present even in low-corruption contexts such as in Sweden.

Do kinship ties affect one's chances of acquiring a public sector job and do they, in such cases, trump formal qualifications? These questions have been subject to scrutiny by both scholars and policymakers, but to date, mainly as a result of data limitations, the empirical evidence is scarce and unclear. This paper explores the role played by kinship in relation to qualified administrative public sector jobs in the context of Sweden, an egalitarian society and top-ranked meritocracy. The paper examines whether an individual's chance of acquiring a public sector job increases if one of his/her parents is already employed in the same part of the public sector and/or organisation. The analysis employs detailed register data that contain complete information on kinship relations. It focuses on state agencies and municipalities in Sweden between 2001 and 2016 and explores the mechanisms behind the intergenerational transfer of public sector jobs in an egalitarian and low-corruption setting. The results reveal that the probability of acquiring a job in the state sector in general increases by about 5-6 percentage points when a parent is employed in a qualified position at a state agency. A parental effect, although lower, is also found for employment in the less prestigious local government. This parental effect can in part, be explained by an increased probability of obtaining employment specifically at the parent's agency and by a higher probability of having acquired valuable work experience prior to graduation.  

Sverige anses regelmässigt tillhöra världens bäst fungerande demokratier. Med det sagt tillsätts återkommande statliga utredningar med uppgift att granska demokratins funktionssätt. Inte sällan uppmärksammas problem och utvecklingsområden. Ett område som regelmässigt uppmärksammas är den ökande koncentrationen av uppdrag i händerna på några få individer ute i de svenska kommunsektorn. 

Mot denna bakgrund syftar föreliggande rapport till att undersöka uppdragskoncentration i svenska kommuner. Den gör det genom att kartlägga koncentrationen av politiska uppdrag samt utforska kopplingen mellan organisationsstruktur och uppdragskoncentration. 

Författarna uppmärksammar bland annat att uppdragskoncentration har begränsningar som indikator på maktkoncentration då måttet inte tar hänsyn till ojämlikhet i fördelningen av uppdrag mellan politiker inom en given kommun. Vidare är sambandet mellan kommunstorlek och uppdragskoncentration inte lika tydligt som det kan verka vid första anblick. Författarna framhäver att uppdragskoncentration inte bara är kopplad till kommunstorlek, utan är starkt korrelerad med hur en kommun väljer att organisera sig. Ett viktigt och delvis nytt resultat jämfört med tidigare forskning är sålunda att kommunerna själva har en betydande möjlighet att påverka koncentrationen av uppdrag. 

För att stärka demokratin och öka inslaget av maktdelning i kommunsektorn bör därför lokala partiorganisationer se över sina interna nomineringsförfaranden och kommuner bör noggrant granskar sin egen organisationsstruktur. Båda dessa faktorer påverkar förekomst av uppdragsojämlikhet och koncentration av makt inom kommunen.