Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government
This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across nations. The first section develops a principal-agent model in which good governance is a function of the extent to which citizens can hold political officials accountable for their actions. Although policy-makers may have strong incentives to appropriate parts of the citizens' income, well-designed institutions (those increasing both informational flows and elite competitiveness) boost political accountability and reduce the space left for the appropriation of rents. The following sections of the paper test the model. The presence of democratic mechanisms of control and an increasingly informed electorate, measured through the frequency of newspaper readership, explain considerably well the distribution of corrupt practices and governmental ineffectiveness in three types of data sets: a large cross-section of countries in the late 1990s for which an extensive battery of governance indicators has been recently developed by Kaufmann et al. (1999a); a panel data set for the period 1980-95 and about 100 nations on corruption and bureaucratic quality based on experts' rankings; and corruption data for the cross-section of US states in the period 1977-95.
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Format: | Working Papers biblioteca |
Language: | English |
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Inter-American Development Bank
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Subjects: | Democracy, Poverty, WP-438, |
Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0010787 https://publications.iadb.org/en/are-you-being-served-political-accountability-and-quality-government |
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dig-bid-node-98982024-05-30T20:21:26ZAre You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government 2000-11-01T00:00:00+0000 http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0010787 https://publications.iadb.org/en/are-you-being-served-political-accountability-and-quality-government Inter-American Development Bank Democracy Poverty WP-438 This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across nations. The first section develops a principal-agent model in which good governance is a function of the extent to which citizens can hold political officials accountable for their actions. Although policy-makers may have strong incentives to appropriate parts of the citizens' income, well-designed institutions (those increasing both informational flows and elite competitiveness) boost political accountability and reduce the space left for the appropriation of rents. The following sections of the paper test the model. The presence of democratic mechanisms of control and an increasingly informed electorate, measured through the frequency of newspaper readership, explain considerably well the distribution of corrupt practices and governmental ineffectiveness in three types of data sets: a large cross-section of countries in the late 1990s for which an extensive battery of governance indicators has been recently developed by Kaufmann et al. (1999a); a panel data set for the period 1980-95 and about 100 nations on corruption and bureaucratic quality based on experts' rankings; and corruption data for the cross-section of US states in the period 1977-95. Inter-American Development Bank J. Mark Payne Carles Boix Alícia Adserà Working Papers application/pdf IDB Publications The Caribbean South America Central America en |
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Democracy Poverty WP-438 Democracy Poverty WP-438 Inter-American Development Bank Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
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This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across nations. The first section develops a principal-agent model in which good governance is a function of the extent to which citizens can hold political officials accountable for their actions. Although policy-makers may have strong incentives to appropriate parts of the citizens' income, well-designed institutions (those increasing both informational flows and elite competitiveness) boost political accountability and reduce the space left for the appropriation of rents. The following sections of the paper test the model. The presence of democratic mechanisms of control and an increasingly informed electorate, measured through the frequency of newspaper readership, explain considerably well the distribution of corrupt practices and governmental ineffectiveness in three types of data sets: a large cross-section of countries in the late 1990s for which an extensive battery of governance indicators has been recently developed by Kaufmann et al. (1999a); a panel data set for the period 1980-95 and about 100 nations on corruption and bureaucratic quality based on experts' rankings; and corruption data for the cross-section of US states in the period 1977-95. |
author2 |
J. Mark Payne |
author_facet |
J. Mark Payne Inter-American Development Bank |
format |
Working Papers |
topic_facet |
Democracy Poverty WP-438 |
author |
Inter-American Development Bank |
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Inter-American Development Bank |
title |
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
title_short |
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
title_full |
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
title_fullStr |
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
title_full_unstemmed |
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government |
title_sort |
are you being served?: political accountability and quality of government |
publisher |
Inter-American Development Bank |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0010787 https://publications.iadb.org/en/are-you-being-served-political-accountability-and-quality-government |
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