Fighting Corruption and the Use of Bribes in the Palestinian Territories: With or Without Social Capital

The presence of dysfunctional formal institutions in the Palestinian Territories might drive the citizens to concentrate on alternative forms of governance more community-oriented. Under these circumstances the set of informal institutions embedded in the social capital of the Palestinian community might help to explain the Palestinians attitude towards corrupt aversion. Hence, by using a unique Palestinian survey conducted in 2007 in West Bank and Gaza Strip, we analyse the relationship between social capital and Palestinians attitude towards corrupt aversion. The variables of social capital refer to voluntary activities and civic attitude while corrupt aversion is captured by the Palestinians’ attitudes towards the use of bribes at work and the importance of fighting corruption. A bivariate probit model reports that corrupt aversion increases with civic attitude and is lower among Palestinians involved in voluntary activities. Predicted conditional probabilities suggest that under negative view of formal institutions and lack of social trust, Palestinians need more civic attitude to cope with corrupt aversion.