A Comprehensive Investigation on The Ratione of Corruption and ITS Liabilities In Ecuador (Circle)

The fight against corruption seems to be as relevant today as it has been in recent decades. Cases of great corruption are usually the center of attention, but less attention is directed towards the study of context -dependent mechanisms that make individuals justify, legitimize or reject corruption, and how corruption is understood and experienced in different groups. The Circle project has members of two local IES, two Belgian IES and three key NGOs that work against corruption and transparency. The project has a mixed method investigation agenda. First, we intend to understand how corruption is lived, value and perceive as a daily fact of the common citizens of Ecuador through qualitative research. We will inquire about what is considered corruption, under what conditions and if citizens know it, accept it, reject it, justify it or legitimize it. In the second stage, our goal is to measure the perceptions and attitudes of Ecuadorians towards corruption from the results of the first stage and complement them with updated literature. We will define the constructs and the context, we will design a set of questions taking into account the validity of content, we will review the items, collect pilot data, we will make corrections, we will select and review items, and evaluate the dimensionality, validity and reliability using a representative sample. In the third stage, we will test hypotheses about the most important factors that facilitate, maintain and mitigate corruption as a form of social interaction, using an experimental design: laboratory experiments and laboratory experiments in the field with target populations. In the process, we will provide training for academics and non -academics, we will promote the debate and strengthen the capacities of the main civil society actors with the aim of providing evidence for a better policy.

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