Quality of Government and Quality of Water

According to a conservative estimation by the World Health Organization, 1.2 billion people lack access to sufficient quantities of safe water, and 2,6 billion people are without adequate sanitation. Consequently, 80 percent of all illnesses in the developing world are estimated to be the result of waterborne diseases claiming the lives of 1,8 million children every year. This paper investigates to what extent this problem is related to the quality of government (QoG) institutions. Two different water quality measures are used – one measuring ecosystem water quality and another measuring access to safe drinking water. The central question is if there is an independent effect of quality of government besides the effects of democratic rule and good economic resources. The results are that for ecosystem water quality, we could not fine that QoG had an independently positive effect. However, this result may have to do with the low quality of available data from many poor countries. Taking into consideration the interaction effect between QoG and economic prosperity, however, we find that there is an independent effect of government effectiveness on the access to safe drinking water, especially in poor countries

Why No Democracy in the Arab-Muslim World? The Importance of Temple Financing and Tax Farming

The absence of a single democracy in the Arab-Muslim world has become a “striking anomaly” for scholars of democratization. The lack of democratization in this part of the world cannot be seen as caused religion as such since there are by now several states with a majority of Muslims that have become democracies. Several other explanations such as values, culture, economic development, rulers’ access to natural resources or the history of colonialism have been refuted. We present a novel explanation for this puzzle that is based on historical variations in “temple financing”. In Northwestern Europe, religion and also secular services managed by local religious institutions have been financed “from below” creating local systems for semidemocratic representation, transparency and accountability. In the Arab-Muslim region, religion and local secular services have been financed “from above” by private foundations that have lacked systems for representation and accountability. It is thus not religion, but how religion has been financed, that is the explanation for the lack of democracy in the Arab-Muslim world

The Failure of Anti-Corruption Policies: A Theoretical Mischaracterization of the Problem

With an increased awareness of the detrimental effects of corruption on development, strategies to fight it are now a top priority in policy circles around the world. Since Africa is home to most of the thoroughly corrupt countries in the world, it is no coincidence that the African continent has been the major target of this movement. To date, however, few successes have resulted from the investment. In fact, in some countries corruption even seems to have become more entrenched in step with the efforts to curb it. The aim of this paper is to advance an explanation to why this is the case. Drawing upon the cases of Kenya and Uganda – two arguably typical African countries when it comes to the problem of corruption and anti-corruption reforms – we argue that contemporary anti-corruption reforms in Africa have largely failed because they are based on a mischaracterization of the problem of corruption in contexts with systematic corruption. More specifically, our analysis reveals that while contemporary anti-corruption reforms are based on a conceptualization of corruption as a principal-agent problem, in the African context corruption rather seems to resemble a collective action problem, making the short-term costs of fighting corruption outweigh the benefits. Consequently, even if most individuals morally disapprove of corruption and are fully aware of the negative consequences for the society at large, very few actors show a sustained willingness to fight it. This, in turn, leads to a breakdown of any anti-corruption reform that builds on the principal-agent framework

Quality of Government, Political Power and the Welfare State

Why have different industrialized capitalist market economies developed such varying systems for social protection and social insurance? The hitherto most successful theory for explaining this is the Power Resource Theory (PRT), according to which the generosity of the welfare state is a function of working class mobilization. In this paper we argue however that there is an undertheorized link in the micro-foundations for PRT, namely why wage earners trying to handle the type of social risks and inequalities that are endemic for a market economy would turn to the state for the solution Our complementary approach, the Quality of Government (QoG) Theory, stresses the importance of trustworthy, reliable, impartial and reasonably uncorrupted government institutions as a precondition for citizens' willingness to support policies for social insurance and redistribution. Drawing on time-series crosssectional data on 18 OECD countries in 1984-2000, we find (a) that QoG positively affects the size and generosity of the welfare state, and (b) that the effect of working class mobilization on welfare state generosity is increasing in the level of QoG

Social Protection Strategies in Efficient and Inefficient States

It is well known that social and labor market policies vary greatly among the advanced industrialized countries, not just in terms of overall spending but also in terms of the allocation of resources across different programs. Scholars in political science, economics and sociology have successfully explained many of these cross-country differences; yet, we are far from a complete understanding of the social and labor market policy choices of governments in advanced democracies. This paper argues that bureaucratic capacity matters greatly to social and labor market policymaking. Social and labor market programs require a reliable and efficient bureaucracy, yet most explanations of cross-country policy variation ignore the interplay between bureaucrats, elected politicians, and voters. The basic idea of the paper is that some types of social and labor market programs involve more bureaucratic discretion then others, and it is difficult for politicians to justify spending on such programs if the bureaucracy is inefficient, corrupt, or both. We therefore expect the quality of the bureaucracy to influence spending on discretionary prog-rams, but not spending on programs that require less bureaucratic capacity. In order to test these hypotheses, we analyze the allocation of public resources to active labor market policy (which involves very much bureaucratic discretion) and cash benefits to families (which involve much less bureaucratic discretion). We use data from 21 countries from 1983 to 2003. The main result are that bureaucratic capacity indeed influence spending on active labor market policy but not on cash benefits to families, even when controlling for a broad set of alternative explanations

Inequality and corruption

Challenging inequalities; pathways to a just world UNESCO, International Social Science Council, University of Sussex (UK). Institute of Development Studies. 275. Science Report 276 277 Science Report 278 279 Science Report. Not only is ..

Antikorruption – big bang-ansatsen

[Anti-corruption – the big bang approach]Anti-corruption measures have received increased global attention in policies for economic development. In this article Bo Rothstein criticizes the predominant anti-corruption policies based on “good governance” and geared towards incremental change. Using game theory and institutional theories on the conditions for collective action, Rothstein shows how this policy approach underestimates the institutional obstacles for such an incremental process in countries with rampant corruption. The prescribed measures can instead worsen the problem when promised changes fail to appear. To end systemic corruption, what is needed is a radical change in the basic social exchange of a society – a big-bang approach. Rothstein emphasizes the indirect positive effects that can be achieved by a general platform to implement universalism and impartiality throughout a state's public administration, and gives the example of how Sweden mastered widespread corruption during the 19th century.Publication history: Published original. The article is a revised translation for Swedish readers of an English manuscript.(Published 2 September 2013)Citation: Rothstein, Bo (2013) ”Antikorruption – big bang-ansatsen”, in Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, issue 1, pp. 7–36. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.1.1Åtgärder mot korruption har hamnat allt högre på den internationella dagordningen för ekonomisk utveckling. I den här artikeln kritiserar Bo Rothstein den dominerande antikorruptionspolitiken som utifrån idéer om ”god samhällsstyrning” försöker inleda inkrementella förändringsprocesser. Med hjälp av spelteori och institutionella teorier om villkoren för kollektiv handling visar han hur denna politik underskattar de institutionella hindren för en sådan enkel inkrementell förändring i genomkorrumperade samhällen. Föreskrivna punktinsatser kan i stället få motsatt effekt när de utlovade förändringarna uteblir. Vad som krävs för att verkligen få bukt med systemisk korruption är inget mindre än en big bang-ansats, en genomgripande förändring av de grundläggande handlingsmönstren i ett samhälle. Genom att titta närmare på hur Sverige kom till rätta med en grasserande korruption under 1800-talet framhåller Rothstein de indirekta positiva effekter som uppnåddes med ett allmänt program för att implementera universalism och opartiskhet i alla led i statsförvaltningen.Publiceringshistorik: Originalpublicering. Artikeln är en översättning och bearbetning för svensk publik av manus skrivet på engelska.(Publicerad 2 september 2013)Förslag på källangivelse: Rothstein, Bo (2013) ”Antikorruption – big bang-ansatsen”, i Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, nr 1, s. 7–36. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.1.

CORRUPTION, GENDER EQUALITY AND FEMINIST STRATEGIES

ABSTRACT The following arguments are presented. 1) Corruption in its various forms is a serious social ill. 2) Democracy is not a safe cure against corruption. 3) Increased gender equality seems to be one important factor behind getting corruption under control. 4) Impartiality in the exercise of public power, not least, when it "translates" into meritocratic recruitment and promotion in the public administration, has a powerful effect on lowering corruption. 5) While some aspects of impartiality are central for gender equality, research results are mixed. Some show that impartial principles promotes gender equality, others show that gender bias exists also in many processes designed to be impartial. Going from these results to policy recommendation is thus fraught with many difficulties. One is how to handle problems of legitimacy in the implementation process for various forms of preferential treatment of discriminated groups. Since these problems are impossible to handle, we may be in for a "Churchillian" argument. Like representative democracy, meritocracy may be a far from ideal solution for lowering corruption and thereby promoting human well-being, but it may be the least bad of existing alternatives