Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies

This article identifies for the first time systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies and argues that these are driven by the inability of political competitors to make broadly credible preelectoral promises to voters. Younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality and secondary school enrollment, and more restrictions on the media; and spend more on public investment and government workers. This pattern is exactly consistent with the predictions of Keefer and Vlaicu (n.d.) . The inability of political competitors to make credible promises to citizens leads them to prefer clientelist policies: to underprovide nontargeted goods, to overprovide targeted transfers to narrow groups of voters, and to engage in excessive rent seeking. Other differences that young democracies exhibit, including different political and electoral institutions, greater exposure to political violence, and greater social fragmentation, do not explain, either theoretically or empirically, these policy choices .     

Clientelism and polarized voting: empirical evidence

One must take country-specific institutional features into account when analyzing former communist countries’ transformation process to new political institutions. We do so for post-communist Albania, where the regional and cultural polarization that has existed for centuries has evolved to clientelism in the new democracy. We show how clientelistic parties give rise to very particular voting patterns. These reveal major differences across regions not only in party choice but also in voters’ responses to government policies. These responses depend on the party in government and on the region concerned. This is in sharp contrast with results obtained when applying the same model to a large number of more advanced democracies with similar electoral institutions. A proper evaluation of democratization in Albania thus requires looking beyond the formal institutions governing elections and taking clientelism and its effect on voter behavior into account.     

Business,social responsibility,and corruption

This paper explores the role of corporate social responsibility and the reporting thereof in the fight against corruption. A special focus is laid on the international endeavors to improve transparency through reporting, and the paper elaborates extensively on the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Voluntary initiatives, such as the UNGC, the OECD guidelines, and the GRI guidelines, are considered to play an important role in providing the trust‐based informal social norms, without which markets and societies cannot function. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism

Studies of clientelism typically assume that political machines distribute rewards to persuade or mobilize the existing electorate. We argue that rewards not only influence actions of the electorate, but can also shape its composition. Across the world, machines employ “voter buying” to import outsiders into their districts. Voter buying demonstrates how clientelism can underpin electoral fraud, and it offers an explanation of why machines deliver rewards when they cannot monitor vote choices. Our analyses suggest that voter buying dramatically influences municipal elections in Brazil. A regression discontinuity design suggests that voter audits—which undermined voter buying—decreased the electorate by 12 percentage points and reduced the likelihood of mayoral reelection by 18 percentage points. Consistent with voter buying, these effects are significantly greater in municipalities with large voter inflows, and where neighboring municipalities had large voter outflows. Findings are robust to an alternative research design using a different data set.     

Lobbying, corruption and political influence

The paper explores the determinants of generalized trust across countries. The findings suggest that only few variables can be considered significant. Social polarization in the form of income inequality and ethnic diversity reduces trust, Protestantism and having a monarchy increases trust while post-communist societies are less trusting than other. The findings also provide support for the use of a standard indicator as a stable measure of generalized trust and emphasize the importance of taking endogeneity seriously.     

腐败的发生机理及腐败风险的预警

腐败的本质是权力的滥用和异化,腐败的发生具有其内在机理。权力是腐败发生的根本性基础,制度或体制的缺陷是腐败发生的客观条件,腐败动机和成分分析是腐败发生的决定性因素。预防腐败的重点是能够发现腐败的苗头、把握腐败的发展趋势。因此,构建腐败风险预警机制就十分必要,腐败风险防范机制、发现机制和警示机制构成了腐败风险预警机制的基本结构。结合教育、制度、监督等反腐败途径,以预防腐败为工作重点,依据腐败行为的发生过程,科学设定腐败风险预警机制的运行程序,保证预防腐败行为的发生和蔓延。     

Pluralism,corporatism and perception of corruption

When people know who is influencing the elected politicians and they may ‘put the rascals out’ in case they feel that the incumbents are corrupt, ceteris paribus, their perception of the level of corruption should not be affected by lobbying. If on the other hand people are not sure which or how many actors are influencing public policy and they are not able to hold the government truly accountable as interest group influence is constant with different governments, people will be more likely to perceive the government as corrupted. The former system is a characteristic of corporatism and the latter of pluralism. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that interest groups with resources such as business groups or firms in pluralist systems are more influential than groups with few resources. Thus, people may perceive pluralist policy‐making system as more corrupt than corporatist policy‐making system where fewer visible actors have more or less equal weight in the policy‐making process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

刍议城镇化进程中农村教育资源配置

20世纪80年代开始,我国开始进行农村教育资源的整合与利用,在这期间,也出现了许多的问题,如闲置的校舍过多,农村教师资源的流失,家长负担过重,孩子的身心健康受到了影响,对当前存在的问题及影响因素进行探讨,发现产生以上原因是因为产权不明,缺乏布局规划导致闲置校舍过多,合并管理导致的教师转岗,合并学校导致寄宿费,生活费等额外的负担。最后,我们根据问题提出了相应的建议,发动群众,明确产权,进行布局规划,明确制度,吸引青年教师,并提高现有的教师水平,加大资助力度,让孩子能够上学,加强对农民工子女上学的保障等一系列措施来改进农村教育资源产生的问题。     

Candidate sex,corruption and vote choice

Existing research suggests that voters may view female politicians as less prone to corruption than male politicians. We argue that this voter belief can yield advantages to hypothetical female candidates as voters sometimes punish them less for bribe accusations. We test these propositions with hypothetical vignettes of sub-national executive races in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. We find that only Uruguayans prefer allegedly corrupt female over male candidates, but when Uruguayans are told that hypothetical corruption is widespread, they do not prefer accused females. Moreover, voters in none of the countries prefer females among candidates who have fought corruption. Our findings thereby demonstrate that voters’ preferences for corrupt female candidates in hypothetical races can vary not only according to the specific justifications for the wrongdoing, but also across countries.     

Religious market structure and democratic performance: Clientelism

Is there a connection between government intervention in religious competition and partisan clientelism in democratic systems? Drawing on the economics of religion, we argue that alongside commonly examined population-level religious processes (religious diversity), state-level religious processes (government regulation of competition in the religious market) affect institutional performance in electoral democracies. Linking comparative indicators of religion-state relations with measures of partisan clientelism, statistical analysis suggests that uncompetitive religious markets, such as those where a dominant religion is sponsored by the state, create incentives, infrastructures and opportunities that favour clientelism. The study emphasises the importance of light-touch regulation of religion not merely as a normative principle narrowly related to religious freedom, but also as a potential remedy that can enhance the quality of political institutions.     

Varieties of Clientelism: Machine Politics during Elections

Although many studies of clientelism focus exclusively on vote buying, political machines often employ diverse portfolios of strategies. We provide a theoretical framework and formal model to explain how and why machines mix four clientelist strategies during elections: vote buying, turnout buying, abstention buying, and double persuasion. Machines tailor their portfolios to the political preferences and voting costs of the electorate. They also adapt their mix to at least five contextual factors: compulsory voting, ballot secrecy, political salience, machine support, and political polarization. Our analysis yields numerous insights, such as why the introduction of compulsory voting may increase vote buying, and why enhanced ballot secrecy may increase turnout buying and abstention buying. Evidence from various countries is consistent with our predictions and suggests the need for empirical studies to pay closer attention to the ways in which machines combine clientelist strategies.     

Electoral rules,corruption, inequality and evaluations of democracy

Features of electoral systems have been found to have positive effects on evaluations of democracy. This article proposes that there are larger social forces that must be accounted for in such analyses. Using European Social Survey measures of democratic expectations and the ‘satisfaction with democracy’ item, this study tests for effects of electoral rules on perceptions of democracy. It is found that multipartyism/proportionality and preferential ballot structure appear to correspond with positive evaluations of elections and parties, and with greater satisfaction with how democracy is functioning. However, these relationships dissipate when corruption and income inequality are accounted for. This suggests substantial limits to the capacity of electoral reforms to enhance democratic legitimacy. It also suggests that studies of mass perceptions of democratic performance may over‐estimate effects of electoral rules if country‐level corruption and income inequality are not accounted for.     

Droughts and corruption

Public Choice - Natural disasters are challenges for good governance. That conclusion follows from recent research investigating the effects of natural disasters on one important force hostile to...     

Consociationalism,corruption and chocolate: Belgian exceptionalism

Governing Belgium is a more complex challenge than governing most other industrialised democracies. The linguistic cleavage and its associated consociationalism, the extremely complex form of federalism, and enduring socio-economic cleavages all pose difficulties for the public sector. Many of the exceptional features of Belgian politics, notably the strength of political parties and perhaps greater clientelism and corruption than found in many other European systems can be seen, however, as means of coping with these complexities and enabling the system to govern.     

嘉兴市农业科技资源优化配置的对策与建议

在分析嘉兴市农业科技资源现状的基础上,深入探讨了其背后存在的深层次问题以及其形成的原因,并就如何优化配置农业科技资源提出建议和措施.如创建区域农业科技研发中心,引进大院名校共建创新载体,培育多元化、多层次创新主体,加快农业科技成果转化应用等.     

Party systems,electoral systems and constraints on corruption

This article explores the relationship between the party system, electoral formulas and corruption. Previous research has focused on the various incentives for political actors to monitor, or engage in corruption based on variations in the electoral formula. However, the electoral formula has mainly served as a proxy for the party system – whether multi-party or two-party. In this analysis, I test directly the relationship between party systems and corruption and in addition, add a degree of nuance to the established line of thinking within this literature. I argue that two-party systems in countries with predominantly single-member district (SMD) electoral formulas will demonstrate lower corruption on average than multi-party systems in SMD countries. However, I argue that this interaction effect does not play out in countries with proportional representation (PR). I test this hypothesis on 70 democratic and semi-democratic countries from 1987 to 2005 and find strong empirical support for the claim that multipartism in SMD countries is associated with higher levels of corruption, while the party system’s relationship with corruption plays no role in PR countries.     

Transparency, wages, and the separation of powers: An experimental analysis of corruption

We conducted an experimental analysis of the causes of corruption, varying the ease of hiding corrupt gains, officials’ wages, and the method of choosing the law enforcement officer. Voters rarely re-elect chief executives found to be corrupt and tend to choose presidents who had good luck. Directly elected law enforcement officers work more vigilantly at exposing corruption than those who are appointed. Increasing government wages and increasing the difficulty of hiding corrupt gains both reduce corruption.     

Complexities of corruption

He has worked for various political organizations and governmental offices. Among his books are American Business and Public Policy (with Raymond Bauer); Tyranny of Schooling: An Inquiry into the Problem of Stupidity;and Representation Versus Direct Democracy.He is at work on a paper on loyalty and reform as sources of corruption.     

用四个强化来深化反腐斗争提高拒腐防变能力

腐败现象是一种腐朽颓废的、阻碍社会前进的文化,体现的是反动落后的道德观和价值观。每一个中共党员、干部对这个问题都不能掉以轻心。要从强化学习意识、强化自律意识、强化制度意识、强化珍惜意识四个方面深化反腐斗争,提高拒腐防变的能力。