Original Article
Institutional checks and corruption: The effect of formal agenda access on governance
WILLIAM B. HELLER,
ANDREAS P. KYRIACOU,
ORIOL ROCA-SAGALÉS,
Corresponding Author
WILLIAM B. HELLER
Binghamton University, USA
Address for correspondence: William B. Heller, Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902, USA. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
WILLIAM B. HELLER,
ANDREAS P. KYRIACOU,
ORIOL ROCA-SAGALÉS,
Corresponding Author
WILLIAM B. HELLER
Binghamton University, USA
Address for correspondence: William B. Heller, Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902, USA. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Legislative checks give whoever wields them influence over policy making. It is argued in this article that this influence implies the ability not only to affect legislative content, but also to direct public resources toward private ends. Rational politicians should use access to checks to make themselves better off – for example, by biasing policy toward private interests or creating opportunities to draw directly from the public till. Disincentives exist only to the extent that those able to observe or block corruption do not themselves benefit from it. Political opponents thus can use checks to stymie each other, but legislative checks controlled by political allies create conditions for collusion and corruption. Testing this claim against data from a sample of 84 countries, the results presented in this article show strong support for the hypothesised relationship between institutional checks and corruption.
Supporting Information
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site:
| Filename | Description |
|---|---|
| ejpr12155-sup-0001-appendix.docx64 KB | Table A1. Summary statistics Table A2. Data definitions and sources Table A3. Variation in institutional checks, by country Table A4. Measuring checks over 1984–2005 (within sample used for base estimation) Table A5. Robustness analysis Figure A1: The marginal effect of institutional checks on corruption (based on model 6 in Table A5) Figure A2: The marginal effect of institutional checks on corruption (based on model 8 in Table A5) |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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