The impacts of corruption on forest loss: A review of cross‐national trends

In: Sociology compass, Volume 16, Issue 9

Abstract

AbstractThis research lays out the debates and contradictory findings regarding the impacts of corruption on forest loss in a cross‐national context, specifically in low‐ and middle‐income nations. After, I describe how these inconsistent findings may be due to difficulties in untangling the complexities of corruption definitionally and then operationalizing it in a cross‐national context. Then, I review the advances in corruption data collection and measurement. Finally, I discuss how these developments in data collection and operationalization have led to an expansion of research on corruption to other aspects of governance, bringing forward several avenues for future research, but also potentially conflating definitions of corruption with governance. Overall, I aim to capture how scholars are studying corruption and forest loss from a cross‐national context and what their findings tell us.