Can corruption foster regulatory compliance?

The legal and economic literatures overwhelmingly support the notion that regulatory compliance is always less in the presence of corruption. This paper departs from those literatures and shows that, whenever public officials are paid fixed wages, an increase in corruption may actually foster compliance. The conditions that make this possible are laid down in a theoretical model. Empirical evidence that corroborates the theoretical findings is provided using firm-level data for 26 transition economies.     

Can Facebook really be a tool for supporting citizen engagement during emergencies?

The present study explores how Italian regions and their presidents employed Facebook during the Covid-19 pandemic to encourage citizen engagement. To do so, it adopts quantitative methodologies. Our results show that most public actors increased their levels of social activity during the pandemic but mainly for promoting public communication and that citizens much prefer interacting with presidents. Moreover, citizen engagement was higher when posts were published during nonbusiness hours or weekends, while it decreased when posts contained photos or videos.     

How much income redistribution? An?explanation based on?vote-buying and?corruption

This paper studies how income tax rates are determined and how they are related to government corruption in the form of fund capture. A?model is presented where rich voters can block redistribution by buying the votes of some poor voters. In equilibrium there is only limited redistribution and income tax rates are a negative function of government corruption. When rich voters can bribe the government, an additional equilibrium with zero taxation is possible. The link between corruption and tax rates is tested using cross country data; the empirical evidence is fully consistent with the predictions of the model.     

A judges' revolution? Political corruption and the judiciary in Italy

Abstract. During the investigations into political corruption in Italy, judges emerged in the eyes of the public as the 'heroes' of a peaceful revolution against the 'villainous' politicians. The established explanation for the active role of the judiciary against corruption stresses the unusual degree of independence of Italian judges. Without denying the importance of this institutional variable, analysis of the interactions between politicians and judges in the history of the Italian Republic allows one to discuss the role of other two important variables: the informal networking between politicians and judges, and the professional culture of the magistracy. The three sets of variables are in fact used to explain two different strategies adopted by Italian judges in their interaction with the political system: a strategy of 'role substitution', acccording to which some judges act as a surrogate power for the protection of the citizens against corrupt politicians, and a 'collusive strategy', consisting of various levels of hidden exchanges between judges and politicians. This article is based on an examination of judicial documents relating to 40 episodes of political corruption, in–depth interviews with experts, reports of relevant Parliamentary Inquiry Commissions, requests for indictment of Members of Parliament, official statistics and the daily and weekly press.     

Can decision transparency increase citizen trust in regulatory agencies? Evidence from a representative survey experiment

Decision transparency is often proposed as a way to maintain or even increase citizen trust, yet this assumption is still untested in the context of regulatory agencies. We test the effect of transparency of a typical decision tradeoff in regulatory enforcement: granting forbearance or imposing a sanction. We employed a representative survey experiment (n = 1,546) in which we test the effect of transparency in general (providing information about a decision or not) and the effect of specific types of transparency (process or rationale transparency). We do this for agencies supervising financial markets, education, and health care. We find that overall decision transparency significantly increases citizen trust in only two of the three agencies. Rationale transparency has a more pronounced positive effect only for the Education Inspectorate. We conclude that the overall effect of decision transparency is positive but that the nature of the regulatory domain may weaken or strengthen this effect.     

A Social Democratic Future? Political and Institutional Hurdles in Scotland

The Nordic model has long been admired in Scotland, and has featured prominently in aspects of the Scottish independence referendum debate. This article explores the difficulties in instituting a similar system here, identifying two significant barriers: the institutional setting (the powers available to Scottish politicians) and the partisan nature of competition between the two parties that might be able to deliver upon such a commitment. It concludes that the prospects of moving towards a Nordic‐style social investment model are slight, given the political, institutional and attitudinal barriers in place.     

Greasing the wheels? The impact of regulations and corruption on firm entry

This paper investigates the question of whether corruption might ‘grease the wheels’ of an economy. We investigate whether and to what extent the impact of regulations on entrepreneurship is dependent on corruption. We first test whether regulations robustly deter firm entry into markets. Our results show that the existence of a larger number of procedures required to start a business, as well as larger minimum capital requirements are detrimental to entrepreneurship. Second, we test whether corruption reduces the negative impact of regulations on entrepreneurship in highly regulated economies. Our empirical analysis, covering a maximum of 43 countries over the 2003–2005 period, shows that corruption facilitates firm entry in highly regulated economies. For example, the ‘greasing’ effect of corruption kicks in at around 50 days required to start a new business. Our results thus provide support for the ‘grease the wheels’ hypothesis.     

Can Amnesties and International Justice be Reconciled?

When states are attempting to recover from periods of serioushuman rights abuse, they often must try to reconcile the competingdemands of different stakeholders. These demands may range fromclaims that complete impunity is a necessary sacrifice to achievepeace, to the belief that without justice no meaningful peacecan be reached. This paper will attempt to highlight the waysin which international courts and quasi-judicial bodies addressthe dilemma of peace versus justice, in relation to amnestylaws. The discussion will consider the main international standardson impunity, the international jurisprudence relating to amnestiesand whether international courts should recognize amnestiesthat are accompanied by alternative forms of justice. This paperwill argue that international courts should recognize amnestiesthat are introduced with democratic approval to promote peaceand reconciliation, provided that they are accompanied by mechanismsto fulfil the victims' rights.     

Exclusion or interests? Why females in elected office reduce petty and grand corruption

Disappointed by the numerous failures of anticorruption reforms, international organisations, scholars and policy makers increasingly place their hopes on measures aimed at enhancing gender equality and in particular increasing the inclusion of female representatives in elected assemblies. Yet most studies to date focus on aggregate measures of corruption and fail to explain why the correlation between women's representation and levels of corruption occurs. Using newly collected regional-level, non-perception-based measures of corruption, this study distinguishes between different forms of corruption and shows that the inclusion of women in local councils is strongly negatively associated with the prevalence of both petty and grand forms of corruption. However, the reduction in corruption is primarily experienced among women. This suggests that female representatives seek to further two separate political agendas once they attain public office: the improvement of public service delivery in sectors that tend to primarily benefit women; and the breakup of male-dominated collusive networks.     

What Influences City Council Adoption and Support for Reinventing Government? Environmental or Institutional Factors?

What influences the degree to which city councils support reinventing government (REGO)? Controlling for environmental factors that are likely to shape council policy adoption as well as the tenure of the chief administrator, the findings of this study underscore that the type of representation system is most consistently related to opposition to REGO. In addition, the economic health of the city and the tenure of the chief administrator are positively associated with council support. Overall, institutional factors affect council policy adoption more than either environmental factors or an administrator's seniority, at least in this policy area.     

Reflections and findings on the critical citizen: Civic education – What for?

Abstract.  The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe proclaimed the year 2005 the 'European Year of Democratic Citizenship through Education', but the question is: What does the democracy-promoting citizen look like? This article focuses on the question of whether satisfied and supportive citizens or critical citizens have attitudes that promote democracy. The discussion of this question is based on empirical results from a survey of German citizens (N = 2,000), applying bivariate and multivariate methods. Political criticism is measured by indicators of dissatisfaction, attentiveness and system preference; five types of citizens are constructed: satisfied-attentive, satisfied-inattentive, dissatisfied-attentive, dissatisfied-inattentive citizens with a preference for a democratic system, and one type preferring nondemocratic systems. The article examines which of these types are more consistent with the 'ideal citizen'– defined as a citizen who participates, is well-informed, identifies with democracy and politics, has good internal efficacy and is willing to defend democracy. The data show that attentive citizens are more likely to promote democracy than inattentive ones. Attentive citizens are politically more knowledgeable, identify more strongly with the democratic system, feel more politically competent and are more willing to defend democracy. Political satisfaction or dissatisfaction has less of an influence on these dispositions.     

Perils of development funding? The tale of EU Funds and grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe

Given the unprecedented scale of intergovernmental development funding and the importance of institutional quality for human well‐being, it is imperative to precisely understand the impact of development funds on corruption. In Europe, European Union (EU) Funds provide a boost to public spending in recipient member states while introducing additional corruption controls. We investigate whether EU Funds increase high‐level corruption in the Czech Republic and Hungary in 2009–2012. We analyze newly collected data from over 100,000 public procurement contracts to develop objective corruption risk indicators and link them to agency level data in the public sector. Propensity score matching estimations suggest that EU funds increase corruption risk by up to 34 percent. The negative effects are largely attributable to overly formalistic compliance and EU Funds overriding domestic accountability mechanisms in public organizations entirely dependent on external funds. The policy implications are profound: governments should reduce barriers to market entry by lowering red tape and prevent excessive concentration of funds.     

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.     

The Life and Death of Public Organizations: A Question of Institutional Design?

Why do some public organizations grow old and others die young? Since Herbert Kaufman first posed this question, considerable research has been devoted to answering it. The findings of that research suggest that the design of new public organizations affects, to a significant degree, their survival chances. In this article, we test whether and how “design factors” affected the durability of the so‐called New Deal organizations initiated under FDR's first term. Our findings confirm that design factors do matter, but their effects change over time. We draw out some potential implications for institutional design and sketch a renewed research agenda to determine why some public organizations survive environmental pressure whereas others succumb to it.     

Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU?

Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU system? Several examples suggest that bureaucratic corruption exists and that the Commission’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, is not a fully independent authority. We thus develop a novel interpretation of the principal-supervisor-agent model to cope with non-independent anti-fraud units. This model shows that corruption is likely to occur when the expected value to the client from bribing the agent is larger than the expected value to the principal of truth-telling by the supervisor. Overall, this analysis points to the risks of flawed incentives and the lack of institutional independence among principal, agent, supervisor and client. Our main policy recommendations as a result of these findings are that OLAF should be placed outside the Commission, and that whistleblowers should receive adequate protection.     

Political will and government anti‐corruption efforts: What does the evidence say?

“Political will” is oft‐cited as the major obstacle to government's anti‐corruption efforts. Notwithstanding, there is remarkably little systematic analysis of the concept, with some scholars describing it as the “slipperiest concept in the policy lexicon,” whereas others are calling for its empirical relevance. This paper tries to unpack the “black box” of political will by making it an empirically relevant concept drawing on evidence from two Asian countries; Singapore and Bangladesh. Four key indicators based on the works of earlier scholars are used including origin of the initiative; comprehension and extent of analysis; credible sanctions; and resource dedication and sustenance are used. The paper also uses Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, World Bank's World Governance Indicators (Control of Corruption and Government Effectiveness), and Political, Economic and Risk Consultancy's annual survey in Asia, as outcome measures. Based on the empirical evidence from the two countries, the paper shows that political will indeed has a positive influence on government's anti‐corruption efforts. Although political will may not be sufficient, it is a necessary condition to fight corruption, and that the difference between the positions of Singapore and Bangladesh on various global corruption league tables may be attributed to political will.     

Still three Wales? Social location and electoral behaviour in contemporary Wales

Wales provides a notable exception to the contemporary academic consensus that electoral behaviour is best studied via choice-based approaches. In Wales, the orthodoxy remains that of the Three-Wales Model, an approach formulated in the 1980s which saw voting behaviour as defined by class, language and national identity. This article submits the Three-Wales Model to detailed scrutiny for the first time. The model is argued to have been constructed on a very narrow theoretical basis, and on flawed measurements. Most importantly, however, the Three-Wales Model is shown to have little empirical leverage on voting behaviour in Wales – either for the period when it was formulated or for more recent elections. Factors associated with ‘valence politics’ theories are shown to provide far greater insight into voting behaviour in contemporary Wales.     

Cheap talk or incredible commitment? (Mis)calculating transparency and anti‐corruption

Why do “tainted” politicians in high‐corruption countries adopt transparency and anti‐corruption policies that risk exposing their wrongdoing? Using the cases of freedom of information and public asset disclosure in Romania, we assess three explanations: that these policies are meant to be mere window dressing, facilitate bottom‐up monitoring, or ensure access to information for the ruling party if it loses power. We find that decision makers adopt transparency and anti‐corruption policies because they want to signal their integrity and because they underestimate their consequences. Because they assume they will be able to control implementation, decision makers discount the potential costs of damaging information being released. Sustained political competition can keep corruption and lack of transparency on the public and political agenda, shifting attention from policy adoption to implementation and leading to increased compliance. Since politicians miscalculate the consequences of their actions, signals that are intended to be cheap can end up being quite costly.