Effect of corruption on healthcare satisfaction in post-soviet nations: A cross-country instrumental variable analysis of twelve countries

A causal association was found between higher levels of corruption and lower levels of satisfaction with local and national governments. However, interaction term analysis provides suggestive evidence that: first, as public service satisfaction increases, the effects of corruption change from negative values to positive values for both local and national governments; second, as political situations improve, the negative effects of corruption diminish for both local and national governments; and, third, as the economic situation improves, the negative effects of corruption diminish for local, but not for national governments.

The article studies the causal effect of trust on the willingness to pay higher taxes to help the needy in a sample of 29 countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. It is hypothesized that interpersonal trust leads to a greater willingness to pay taxes to help the needy since (i) trust increases the likelihood of helping strangers; (ii) trust fosters solidarity and cooperation when working to solve common problems in society; and (iii) trust reduces suspicion with respect to the perceived misuse of redistributed money. Three key findings are that the more people trust each other, the more they are ready to support the welfare state; the effect of trust on welfare state support holds even in a contextual environment characterized by rather lower levels of trust and relatively underdeveloped systems of redistribution; and higher individual‐level trust fosters tax morale and helps deter tax evasion.

This study explores the formation of the urban middle class in Tajikistan, a low‐income country in which large outmigration has developed over the past decades. Our study uses a Bourdieusian framework to note the ways international migration creates opportunities for class in the context of socio‐political constraints, which hinder upward social mobility of Tajikistan's population. Drawing from ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, our study investigates the cultural production of the urban middle class and contextualises its contested nature. We address the dynamic quality of class distinctions through the lens of culture, status, and symbolic values to unpack social and cultural processes that shape the formation of class in post‐Soviet Tajikistan. We argue that although managing competing constraints, Tajik migrants use migration‐related capital to become a part of the growing middle class. Our study contributes to scholarship on migration and class and suggests that analytical attention to different types of capital allows for a better understanding of class formation in sending countries.