Trust and Effectiveness in Corruption Prevention: Evidence from Hong Kong

Positive public perceptions of trust and effectiveness are critically important for institutions engaged in corruption prevention. If these perceptions form an insulated mutually reinforcing virtuous circle, then the anti-corruption agency can benefit from solid community support in pursuit of its goals. These ideal conditions, however, are often disrupted by exogenous factors that may stem, for example, from declining trust in government as a whole or evident inability to deal with corruption in high places. In this article, using Hong Kong as an example, we examine how its Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) managed to build and retain trust in a turbulent environment but also how perceptions of its effectiveness were adversely affected by exogenous factors. The analysis is based on the ICAC’s surveys of attitudes toward corruption and on our own survey, conducted in mid-2020, which focused directly on significant indicators of trust and effectiveness.