Abstract

A secondary analysis was performed on 61 countries' data commonly obtained from (a) Transparency International's 1998 corruption perceptions indices for 85 countries, (b) Inglehart's (1997) interpersonal trust percentages for 43 countries, and (c) Hofstede's (1991) indices for four dimensions of culture (power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and uncertainty avoidance) for 53 countries. Main findings are (a) that 66% of variances in national transparency and 57% of variances in interpersonal trust were explained by the four dimensions of culture, and (b) that 45% of variances in national transparency were explained by interpersonal trust. Individualism was the most powerful dimension of culture in predicting national transparency, and power distance was the most efficient in predicting interpersonal trust. The higher the interpersonal trust score, the higher the transparency index. In addition, in was also found that interpersonal trust significantly mediated the effects of individualism and uncertainty avoidance on national transparency, while the effect of power distance was mostly direct on national transparency with little mediation of interpersonal trust. It was suggested that the habituation of high context communication style (which includes more guessing than accepting the expressed communication as it is), based on collectivism and authoritarianism, may work as an important factor interfering with the development of transparency.