Corruption in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo: a deal among friends

Since the late 1990s international state builders have paid increasing attention to fighting corruption in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. On the surface this effort has brought significant results, since both countries have adopted legal frameworks modelled on the best practices of Western democracies. In practice, however, corruption remains rampant. This disappointing outcome has several explanations: in reviewing the empirical evidence we consider the two countries as cases involving heavily assisted transition from both socialism and war, highlighting how collusive practices between political and criminal interests have played a role in establishing formally liberal but substantively ‘hybrid’ institutions. We argue that the spread of corruption has been implicitly legitimised by international actors, who have pressured local parties to accept the formal architecture of good governance, including anti-corruption legislation, while turning a blind eye to those extra-legal structures and practices perceived as functional to political stability.     

Women in Contemporary Democratization

Over the past two decades authoritarian regimes in many parts of the developing world, as well as in East/Central Europe, have been replaced by democracies. This paper looks at the issue of democratization from a gender perspective. While many of the problems afflicting the new democracies, such as the elitist character of political parties, and the failure of the state to guarantee civil and political rights or make a significant dent in poverty affect all citizens, they are manifested and experienced in gender-specific ways. Women's persistent exclusion from formal politics, in particular, raises a number of specific questions about how to reform democratic institutions since these institutions are not automatically gender-equitable.     

Presidents and cabinets: The political determinants of fiscal behavior in Latin America

What political factors drive fiscal behavior in Latin America’s persidential democracies? This work seeks to identify the political determinants of the level of public spending and the primary balance of ten democratic regimes in Latin America between 1980 and 1998. We consider, besides the influence of traditional variables such as the government’s ideological orientation and electoral cycle, the impact of other institutional and political aspects, such as the legislative strength of the president, ministerial stability, and the degree of centralization of budget institutions. Methodologically, the work is based on a pooled cross-section-time-series data analysis of 132 observations. Our main findings are that presidents supported by a strong party and leading a stable team of ministers—and ones more to the right on the political spectrum—had a negative impact on public spending and a positive effect on fiscal balance, and that the electoral cycle deteriorates the latter.     

Media corruption and issues of journalistic and institutional integrity in post-communist countries: The case of Bulgaria

From a normative standpoint the media are usually seen as one of the pillars of a national integrity system, entrusted with the tasks of exposing and preventing acts of corruption and educating the public of the harm caused by corruption. Nevertheless, corruption continues to be one of the most significant challenges that Europe faces, undermining citizens' trust in democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of political leadership. Evidence suggests that in fragile EU democracies such as Bulgaria, despite more than eight years of full membership and numerous preventive measures, corruption is rife and the press is hardly capable of exposing abuses of power or authority. On the contrary - drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 Bulgarian journalists - this paper argues that since communism collapsed in the late 1980s the media in post-communist societies such as Bulgaria has gradually become an instrument to promote and defend private vested interests, and is plagued by corruption. Senior journalists and editors cast serious doubt over the ability of the post-communist free press and journalism to act as a watchdog for society.     

Political corruption,economic performance,and electoral outcomes: a cross-national analysis

The current study examines how the incumbent government's economic performance plays a role in mediating the impact of political corruption on electoral outcomes in 115 developing countries with relatively higher levels of corruption than Western consolidated democracies. Borrowing theoretical insights from the information-processing theory of voting, this study finds that political corruption becomes a formative electoral factor when the regime fails to sustain a sufficient level of economic growth. Otherwise, political corruption is not a significant factor that shapes electoral outcomes, irrespective of the level of perceived corruption, because the economy occupies voters' minds as the most important issue, making it a more accessible issue than political corruption.     

Formal institutions,informal institutions,and red tape: A comparative study

Firms across the globe are affected by red tape, but there is little academic research on how country‐level institutions shape red tape perceptions. Drawing on institutional theory, we argue that a variety of formal and informal country‐level institutions affect perceptions of red tape in the private sector. We test our hypotheses using six data sources, including the World Economic Forum and the World Bank. Our results indicate that red tape is weakly associated with a country's level of formalization and rule enforcement effectiveness and more prevalent in federal as opposed to unitary states. As for informal institutions, we find that red tape perceptions are more pronounced in countries with an increased conservative political ideology, higher levels of corruption, and cultures that emphasize individualism and uncertainty avoidance. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for theory and practice.     

Corruption and Popular Support for Democracy and Government in Transitional Contexts: The Case of Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Many studies have argued that corruption undermines perceived democratic legitimacy, trust in state institutions, and government support. However, few prior studies have included transitional or hybrid regimes in their analyses, or simultaneously examined multiple aspects of this relationship. Using focus groups and a nationally representative survey conducted throughout a tumultuous transitional period in Kyrgyzstan, we find evidence for our hypotheses that citizens with greater corruption concerns will be more pro-democratic when evaluating democracy or its institutional components in the abstract; yet, they distrust existing government institutions. Even in a hybrid regime lacking democratic experience, citizens exhibit attributes of distrusting democrats.     

Institutions and Bribery in an Authoritarian State

Scholars have suggested that corruption could serve as a substitute for property-protecting institutions in developing countries, but very few empirical studies have been conducted to test this theory. Most existing studies on the determinants of corruption are cross-national, rely on perception-based measures, and focus on economic development, regime type, and market structure as explanatory variables. Little is known about why corruption occurs in an authoritarian state at the micro level. We theorize bribery as a bargaining process between a firm and a rent-maximizing public official, and we assume that graft-paying firms face different sets of rules and regulations, which govern firms' costs and benefits of bribing. We test the hypothesis that firms' bribes are determined by the rigor of their internal auditing control and the quality of property-protecting institutions. We use entertainment and travel costs directly observed in a large-scale firm-level survey in China as a proxy for corruption. Our study implies that firms operating in a weak property rights regime rely on political connections as a substitute for formal legal protection. The findings shed light on the literature on property rights, corruption, and East Asian development.     

Democracies in crisis

The main contribution of this study is to identify democracies in the world that are at risk of becoming non-democracies. It is hypothesized that if democracies have a low level of legitimacy and have low effectiveness, they are at risk of becoming non-democratic regimes. These types of democracies are called weak democracies. Of the seven democracies that are identified as weak democracies between 2000 and 2010, the weakest of them, Mali, has already fallen. However, looking at the results of this study, it is not surprising that the democratic regime in Mali fell. The other six countries that are identified as weak democracies are Benin, Mongolia, Lesotho, El Salvador, Belize, and Mexico. The democratic regimes in these six weak democracies should be observed in more detail in the future to predict whether they are close to falling and losing their democratic institutions, or whether they will recover and no longer be weak democracies.     

Civil Society’s Claims to Political Representation in Brazil

Civil society is laying claim to political representation in contemporary democracies, destabilizing long-standing ideas about democratic legitimacy. The participatory governance structures that have emerged alongside classic institutions of representative democracy encompass not only direct citizen participation but also political representation by civil society actors. Using original data from São Paulo, Brazil, we show that most of civil society actors that work for the urban poor claim political representation of their “constituency.” Theirs is more often than not an “assumed representation,” we suggest, because our data show that most lack formal members and do not select leaders through elections. Civil society actors (in contrast to political parties and labor unions) lack historically settled and politically sanctioned mechanisms to authorize and hold accountable their representation. This new layer of political representatives therefore faces a historic challenge—constructing novel notions of democratic legitimacy that can support their forms of representation. We examine what new notions of representations are emerging and trace the historic roots of the most widespread and promising that focus on remedying inequality in access to the state.     

Pseudo‐democracy in the Muslim world

This paper investigates the mechanisms of democratisation leading to the formation of pseudo‐democratic political systems in the contemporary Muslim world. It is argued that pseudo‐democracies in the Muslim world are created and strengthened by the structural opposition between three types of democratic doctrines, social practices and institutional mechanisms inspired by liberalism, republicanism and Islamism. Departing from the usual instrumentalist analyses that dominate the democratisation literature, this account emphasises that pseudo‐democratic regimes are not simply an expedient fallback position from liberal democratic systems but dynamic political orders based on alternative notions of democracy. It is argued that what is specific to the Muslim world as a socio‐historical construct is that pseudo‐democracies are produced by the evolving stalemate between the three abovementioned political currents. In these polities liberal democratic discourses and practices are undermined by non‐liberal yet demotic forms of social mobilisation and political learning that are more effective than laissez‐faire models of liberal political mobilisation.     

Inequality,democracy and taxation: Lessons from the post-communist transition

Using data for the period 1989 – 2002, we examine the determinants of income inequality in post-communist economies. We find a strong positive association between equality and tax collection but note that this relationship is significantly stronger under authoritarian regimes than under democracies. We also discover that countries introducing sustainable democratic institutions early are characterised by lower inequality. We also confirm that education fosters equality and find that larger countries are prone to higher levels of inequality.     

What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes

ABSTRACT

Because the legitimacy of political authorities exists only in the eyes of citizens, this study investigates which criteria citizens use to decide that an authority is legitimate. By comparing ideas about what makes political authorities legitimate, this study in five European democracies and hybrid regimes illuminates the ‘demand side of political legitimacy’. Using original student survey data, this article compares expectations of students from the Netherlands, France, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia about how political authorities should acquire the right to rule and how they ought to behave when in office. The analysis shows that the respondents across the five countries use similar criteria for granting legitimacy. Across the five countries, throughput and input were more important criteria for legitimacy than the output produced by authorities. Although several country differences were found, these differences did not align with regime type. The findings challenge the widespread view that what kind of authorities people consider legitimate is determined by their socialization in a particular political regime.     

New media and governance in conflict

The role of new media in shaping the interactions of formal and informal leaders with their audiences is frequently misunderstood and often narrowly focussed on electoral processes and political competition. By weaving together strands of scholarship on political communication and political settlement while engaging with concepts of hybrid governance and leadership more prevalent in the African studies literature, this article takes a different, wider focus. We attempt to knit a framework that challenges normative assumptions on institutional communicative practices and considers the role of power, leadership and communications in both exacerbating and mitigating violent conflict in emerging and consolidating democracies. By bringing together disparate strands of scholarship that are rarely in dialogue, we question a characterisation that contrasts vertical mainstream media with more horizontal and inclusive social media, arguing that a more nuanced view of the political significance of these spaces is required, one that highlights their interplay and blurs the boundaries between online and offline. In doing so, the article places power at the centre of analysis to examine how entrenched relations of patronage can be left unscathed, transformed or even reinforced by networked forms of communication.     

Democratic states and authoritarian firewalls: America as a black knight in the uprising in Bahrain

Although history is replete with democracies supporting autocracies, democratic black knights have not been approached in a systematic manner. This article examines American rhetoric and policy towards the 2011 uprising and subsequent crackdown in Bahrain in order to further our understanding of how and why democratic states act to reinforce authoritarian firewalls. It finds that the USA was instrumental in providing diplomatic and political cover to the Bahraini government and ensuring that the regime paid no substantive costs for its counter-democracy actions. This case suggests that democratic states may be more effective at providing normative support for non-democratic regimes than their authoritarian counterparts and that democracies may have more in common with autocracies when choosing to act as a black knight than initially thought. Avenues for future research are identified.     

When Is Democracy Better for Economic Performance and when Is It Not: the Interaction Between Polity and Structural Factors

Is democracy or autocracy better for economic performance? Why do autocracies exhibit a greater variation in growth rate than democracies? We argue that democracy??s effects on growth are conditional on structural factors. Democracy is superior to autocracy only when structural factors, such as external threats or natural resource intensity, are not favorable to growth. Conversely, where structural factors are conducive to growth, autocracies are likely to perform better or equally well as democracies. By incorporating institutional and structural incentives into the equation, we answer the questions regarding the relative strengths and weaknesses of political regimes in pursing economic development. The empirical evidence examining postwar data significantly supports the hypotheses.     

Multiple democracies: political cultures and democratic variety in post-enlargement Europe

Democratization studies endorses a liberal view of democracy and political culture. Insufficient notice is taken of alternative models of democracy. I argue that a ‘multiple democracies’ approach that takes potential variety in democratic political cultures into account has three advantages over the conventional approach: it is sensitive to the historical and contextual nature of democratic regimes, it takes a dual imaginary into account, and it is able to conceptualize the emergence of innovative forms of political culture. Instead of a ‘model approach’, I suggest a multiple democracies approach that identifies political cultures by means of available patterns of cultural repertoires or ethics of democracy.     

Classifying political regimes

This study presents a classification of political regimes as democracies and dictatorships for a set of 141 countries between 1950 or the year of independence and 1990. It improves existing classifications by a better grounding in political theory, an exclusive reliance on observables rather than on subjective judgements, an explicit distinction between systematic and random errors, and a more extensive coverage.     

Still a new democracy? Individual-level effects of social trust on political trust in South Korea

The social capital theory holds that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust; however, despite the prominence of this postulation, this relationship has often been disputed among political scientists. While recent studies on advanced democracies have shown a strong positive relationship between social and political trust, studies on East Asian democracies, which previously showed a weak or negative relation, remain scant, separating these countries into their own category of new democracies. The motivation of this study is based on the importance of revisiting the relationship between social and political trust using recent data from one such country—South Korea—to determine the nature of this previously studied negative or weak relationship. The results of this study indicate that generalized social trust in South Korea is positively associated with political trust. This result is in line with recent findings in advanced democracies. While this positive relationship is consistent and significant across models, a greater portion of political trust is explained by economic and political performance, including factors such as the economy, corruption, inequality, and the welfare system, making institutional performance a critical predictor of political trust.     

Party size and policy outcomes: An empirical analysis of taxation in democracies

Taxation varies widely among democracies. Yet scholars disagree whether differences in political institutions help produce the variation. This article identifies topdown and bottom-up mechanisms by which political institutions are thought to influence taxation. It then combines political and economic data on more than 50 democracies to evaluate the impact of political institutions on government revenues. Cross-sectional and pooled time series analyses that include controls for economic conditions and partisan ideologies of governments confirm an indirect impact of these institutions: there is a curvilinear relationship between the size of political parties in a democracy and the tax revenues collected. Yet the effect of party size on policy outcomes is limited to a subset of democracies. The article opens new paths for research on the roles of electoral, constitutional, legislative, and party institutions in democratic policy making around the world. Andrew C. Gould is associate professor of government at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a Fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. He recently publishedOrigins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth Century Europe and the article “Conflicting Imperatives and Concept Formation,” which appeared inThe Review of Politics. For their suggestions and/or data, I thank José Antonio Cheibub, Sven Steinmo, Duane Swank, Daniel Verdier, and Michael Wallerstein. For their comments, I am grateful to Carles Boix, Delia Boylan, Lloyd Gruber, Fran Hagopian, Peter Hall, Mark Hallerberg, Gretchen Helmke, Scott Mainwaring, Paul Mueller, Dennis Quinn, Ashutosh Varshney, and two anonymous reviewers. Peter Baker and Tom Lundberg provided insights and skilled research assistance. This work was supported in part by a grant from the Faculty Research Program, University of Notre Dame. A prior version of this article was presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The errors that remain are my own.