"[We] know little about the possible role of different political institutional arrangements on political corruption. This article examines the impact of territorial sovereignty (unitary or federal) and the composition of the executive (parliamentary or presidential) on levels of perceived political corruption cross-nationally. We find that unitary and parliamentary forms of government help reduce levels of corruption. To explain this result, we explore a series of seven potential causal mechanisms that emerge out of the competing centralist and decentralist theoretical paradigms ..." (Quoted from paper)