Corruption, political culture and negative social capital in Brazil

Abstract

One of the problems in strengthening Brazilian democracy has been the endurance of continued corruption on the part of state officials. The result has been the institutionalization of a political culture, which shows a growing alienation, and apathy of citizens regarding politics. This behavior has its origins in citizens´ perception that the state and public authorities cannot be trusted producing an inertial democracy with low stocks of social capital. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corruption practices by state authorities and the structuring of a defective political culture in Brazil. The working hypothesis is that serious cases of institutionalized corruption are possible due to invisible social ties created among public authorities, producing social capital of a negative nature, which constraints the effective advancements in Brazilian democracy.