The effect of corruption has many dimensions related to political,
economic, social and environmental effects. In political sphere,
corruption impedes democracy and the rule of law. In a democratic
system, public institutions and offices may lose their legitimacy when
they misuse their power for private interest. Corruption may also result
in negative consequences such as encoring cynicism and reducing
interest of political participation , political instability , reducing
political competition, reducing the transparency of political decision
making, distorting political development and sustaining political
activity based on patronage, clientelism and money, etc.
The economic effects of corruption can be categorized as minor and
major. However, both in one way or the other have serious impact on the
individual community and country. First and foremost, corruption leads
to the depletion of national wealth. It is often responsible for
increased costs of goods and services, the funneling of scarce public
resources to uneconomic high profile projects at the expense of the much
needed projects such as schools, hospitals and roads, or the supply of
potable water, diversion and misallocation of resources, conversion of
public wealth to private and personal property, inflation, imbalanced
economic development, weakling work ethics and professionalism,
hindrance of the development of fair in market structures and unhealthy
competition there by deterring competition. Large scale corruption hurts
the economy and impoverishes entire population.
