Corruption in National Institutions and E-Government Maturity: Insights from Cross-Country Data.

As opposed to a host of past research that studied the impact of e-government on corruption, we contribute to another potential but under-developed stream of research, which focuses on the impact of corruption on e-government maturity. Specifically, there is a limited theoretical and empirical understanding of how corruption can affect e-government maturity. Adopting an institutional perspective to conceptualize corruption and drawing on the agency theory and the rent-seeking theory, we argue that corruption in three basic national institutions (political, legal, and media institutions) in a country can hinder its e-government maturity. We test our hypotheses using the publicly available archival data from 103 countries. This study offers initial insights into the “corruption—e-government” phenomenon by highlighting the role of corruption in different institutions, and provides important implications that would encourage further research on the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]