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Women’s political empowerment: Influence of women in legislative versus executive branches in the fight against corruption
... From the foregoing, it is evident that a considerable number of studies in the literature agree that corruption lowers governance quality and that both corruption and poor governance are major obstacles to development. However, there is still no consensus on the impact of women's participation in governance on corruption (Watson & Moreland 2014;Ayodeji et al., 2020;Goel & Nelson, 2023). Furthermore, there is still no consensus on whether women's participation in governance is a cause or an effect of corruption (Sundstrom & Wängenerud, 2016;Esarey & Schwindt-Bayer, 2019;Armstrong et al., 2022). ...
... Conversely, anticorruption efforts which rely on participation of fewer women in governance increase governance quality. This finding is consistent with studies which concluded that women's participation in governance enhances anticorruption effort (Alexander & Bagenholm, 2018;Jha & Sarangi, 2018;Esarey & Schwindt-Bayer, 2019;Goel & Nelson, 2023) and studies which suggested that the ability of such anticorruption efforts to achieve corruption reduction sufficient to improve governance quality depends on whether these women are accessible or dignified in character (Hewitt, 2018), connected to the existing corrupt male-dominated structure or not (Mechkova et. al. 2022), appointed or elected to public office directly related to corruption deterrence or not (Alexander & Bagenholm, 2018), and wholly committed to the pursuit of pro-women issues or not (Bauhr et. ...
... Furthermore, this finding implies that that control of corruption is a cause and not an effect of women's participation in governance in sub-Saharan Africa. This is consistent with the existing studies which have examined corruption as a determinant of women's participation in governance (Sundström & Wängenerud, 2016;Esarey & Schwindt-Bayer, 2019;Armstrong et al., 2022) but is inconsistent with studies which have examined women's participation in governance as a determinant of control of corruption (Watson & Moreland, 2014;Mechkova et al., 2022;Tusalem, 2022;Goel & Nelson, 2023). Women's Participation in Governance: A Quick Fix to Development Constraints in Sub-Saharan Africa? ...
The inhuman socioeconomic repercussions of corruption and bad governance inherent in successive male-dominated governments have generated agitation for increased women's participation in governance. Primarily, this agitation is based on the premise that women are less inclined to corruption, which is a major impediment to good governance. Given the notoriety of these two impediments to development, this study aims to investigate the relationship between women's participation in governance, corruption, and quality of governance in sub-Saharan Africa from 1996 to 2021. This study analyzed annual panel data of four sub-Saharan African countries using the autoregressive distributed lag model and the Granger causality test. Governance quality was proxied by government effectiveness, while women's participation in governance and corruption were proxied by the number of women in government positions and control of corruption, respectively. Economic development and institutional quality were used as control variables. The findings revealed negative main and interaction effects of women's participation in governance and corruption on governance quality, unidirectional causality from corruption to women's participation in governance and from governance quality to women's participation in governance, and bidirectional causality between corruption and governance quality. Quantitative increases in women's participation in governance and corruption exacerbates governance quality. Women's ability to participate in governance is determined by the prevalence of corruption in previous years. Anticorruption campaigns that focused on women's participation in governance often result in reductions in corruption insufficient for improvement of governance quality. Corruption and bad governance are mutually reinforcing. Governance quality determines women's participation in governance. To minimize corruption and bad governance, sub-Saharan African countries should shift their focus away from merely increasing the number of women in government positions to building strong institutions capable of creating a meritocratic political and socioeconomic environment in which selfless women and men have equal chances of being elected or appointed to public offices.
... McGee and Benk (2023) observed that a person's age directly influences their likelihood of engaging in bribery. It was also mentioned by Merkle and Wong (2020) and Goel and Nelson (2023) that women are less prone than men to be corrupt. Zouaoui, Arab and Alamri (2021) linked high levels of unemployment and underemployment to corruption. ...
... It was also found that Nigerian cultures are tolerant of corruption because friends and family will subtly push those in positions of power to engage in corruption and redefine it so that it is not recognised as such. These findings support previous studies, which showed that certain dispositions of individuals affect individual actions (Merkle and Wong, 2020;Gök, 2021;Zouaoui, Arab and Alamri, 2021;McGee and Benk, 2023;Goel and Nelson, 2023), and a nation's current institutional deficiencies all encourage corruption (Sumah, 2018;Igiebor, 2019;Wachs et al., 2019;Owusu, Chan and Ameyaw, 2019;Shahaab et al., 2023). The realities of these claims are supported by Giddens in Giddens and Sutton (2017), who maintained that people act as informed objects in collaboration with the social order to alter their social reality, where structure can be a factor that both enables and constrains human behaviour as explained by SAT. ...
Corruption is a global pandemic with serious negative consequences. While many studies have focused largely on its prevalence, measurements, and threats to socioeconomic development, there is knowledge deficit of its social construction. A pilot survey investigated social construction of corruption in Ibadan, Nigeria, due to its metropolitan nature that comprises rural and urban features. The study adopted Max Weber and James Coleman's Social Action Theory. Ten in-depth interviews were purposively conducted with a lawyer, two lecturers, two business people, three commercial drivers/motorcyclist, and two civil servants. Four focus group discussions were held (with two in each) among students and journalists. Braun and Clarke's six steps thematic analysis was utilised. The findings revealed divergent opinions on how corruption is socially constructed. It was generally agreed that corruption is influenced by existing laws, as well as the motivations and sense of reasoning behind individual's actions. It was discovered that the social construction of corruption was influenced by the seeming compatibility with the culture of gift-giving and the lack of severe penalties for corrupt behaviour. The pilot survey has policy implications for addressing corruption in Nigeria and calls for the initiation of community sensitisation programmes involving all stakeholders in the country.
... Educational Cultural norms frequently support gender inequality in many patriarchal settings, which can present considerable obstacles for women seeking empowerment in schools. patriarchal norms and attitudes restrict women's access to education and work prospects, which has a detrimental effect on female teacher empowerment , according to a study by Goel and Nelson (2023). In a similar vein, Lecoutere, Van den Berg, and De Brauw (2023) revealed that patriarchal norms restrict women's ability to make decisions, which has an adverse effect on their empowerment in education sector. ...
... Educational linguistic discourse mediates gender identity and student empowerment in education, according to many studies. Goel & Nelson (2023) showed that several phrases used to characterize students, particularly females, can be gendered and biased. By researching the language features of educational discourse, we can fight these gender prejudices and create an environment that encourages all children, regardless of gender identity, to succeed in school. ...
Educational culture is a community or society's values, conventions, and practices that guide educational systems and institutions. It includes schools, universities, informal learning contexts, pedagogical methodologies, curriculum design, and education attitudes. Gender identity based on male and female teachers and its impact at the empowerment of female teachers in education sector have garnered huge interest from researchers and students across numerous fields of examine. This particular study sought to delve into the connection between gender identity and female teacher empowerment in education sector, with a particular recognition on exploring the moderating function of Linguistic Discourse in education and the mediating role of educational cultural values and educational social context . A sample of 500 women spanning numerous areas and socioeconomic backgrounds inside the China become recruited, encompassing an age range of 18 to sixty five years. To acquire information, an online survey was employed, which integrated standardized measures of gender identity, cultural values, educational social context , and empowerment in education sector. Additionally, a comprehensive evaluation of participants' communication patterns and language usage in education sector was conducted to assess Educational linguistic discourse in education sector. Structured equation modeling was used to conduct statistical analysis. Results indicated that gender identity predicts female teacher empowerment in education sector significantly, and that educational cultural values and educational social context partially mediate this relationship. Women who held more progressive educational cultural values and perceived a more supportive social environment reported greater levels of empowerment. In addition, educational linguistic discourse in education moderated the relationship between gender identity and female teacher empowerment in a substantial way. The relationship between gender identity and empowerment was stronger among women who used more inclusive language and avoided gender stereotypes. These findings shed light on the complexity of female teacher empowerment in education and how gender identity, educational cultural values, educational social context, and language use shape women's experiences. The study emphasizes developing progressive educational cultural values and a supportive social environment in education sector to empower women and reduce gender inequities. The study emphasizes inclusive language and eliminating gender stereotypes to promote gender equality and women's empowerment.
... Educational Cultural norms frequently support gender inequality in many patriarchal settings, which can present considerable obstacles for women seeking empowerment in schools. patriarchal norms and attitudes restrict women's access to education and work prospects, which has a detrimental effect on female teacher empowerment , according to a study by Goel and Nelson (2023). In a similar vein, Lecoutere, Van den Berg, and De Brauw (2023) revealed that patriarchal norms restrict women's ability to make decisions, which has an adverse effect on their empowerment in education sector. ...
... Educational linguistic discourse mediates gender identity and student empowerment in education, according to many studies. Goel & Nelson (2023) showed that several phrases used to characterize students, particularly females, can be gendered and biased. By researching the language features of educational discourse, we can fight these gender prejudices and create an environment that encourages all children, regardless of gender identity, to succeed in school. ...
Educational culture is a community or society's values, conventions, and practices that guide educational systems and institutions. It includes schools, universities, informal learning contexts, pedagogical methodologies, curriculum design, and education attitudes. Gender identity based on male and female teachers and its impact at the empowerment of female teachers in education sector have garnered huge interest from researchers and students across numerous fields of examine. This particular study sought to delve into the connection between gender identity and female teacher empowerment in education sector, with a particular recognition on exploring the moderating function of Linguistic Discourse in education and the mediating role of educational cultural values and educational social context . A sample of 500 women spanning numerous areas and socioeconomic backgrounds inside the China become recruited, encompassing an age range of 18 to sixty five years. To acquire information, an online survey was employed, which integrated standardized measures of gender identity, cultural values, educational social context , and empowerment in education sector. Additionally, a comprehensive evaluation of participants' communication patterns and language usage in education sector was conducted to assess Educational linguistic discourse in education sector. Structured equation modeling was used to conduct statistical analysis. Results indicated that gender identity predicts female teacher empowerment in education sector significantly, and that educational cultural values and educational social context partially mediate this relationship. Women who held more progressive educational cultural values and perceived a more supportive social environment reported greater levels of empowerment. In addition, educational linguistic discourse in education moderated the relationship between gender identity and female teacher empowerment in a substantial way. The relationship between gender identity and empowerment was stronger among women who used more inclusive language and avoided gender stereotypes. These findings shed light on the complexity of female teacher empowerment in education and how gender identity, educational cultural values, educational social context, and language use shape women's experiences. The study emphasizes developing progressive educational cultural values and a supportive social environment in education sector to empower women and reduce gender inequities. The study emphasizes inclusive language and eliminating gender stereotypes to promote gender equality and women's empowerment.
... Por ejemplo, la centralidad de "participación" y "política" sugiere que la mayoría de los estudios se enfocan en el ámbito político-institucional, mientras que otros aspectos, como la paridad en el ámbito económico o cultural, podrían estar menos representados, hechos refrendados por la literatura. (26) Figura 5a. Datos bibliométricos de paridad de género, clústeres claves entre 1968 y agosto de 2023 Salud, Ciencia y Tecnología -Serie de Conferencias. ...
A bibliometric analysis and a literature review on gender parity theories were carried out using Scopus and VOSviewer. The search in Scopus allowed us to study the temporal evolution, types of publications (books, articles, scientific notes), disciplines and countries. The results show that gender parity has been studied since 1968, with a gap between 1969 and 1993 and a notable increase since 2006. Social sciences lead the research, followed by arts and humanities, business, medicine and economics. In Mexico, parity is supported by the three spheres of government, with significant advances in the electoral field. Countries such as Sweden, Finland and Denmark show high female representation in their congresses, while Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Greece present weaker systems. It is concluded that gender parity and legislative power quotas are essential for social and female empowerment, highlighting the need for more robust public policies and interdisciplinary approaches to achieve real and effective equity.
... La PP femenina se define como la inclusión activa y significativa de las mujeres en los procesos de toma de decisiones políticas (Lee, 2022), abarcando desde el ejercicio del sufragio hasta la postulación y elección para cargos públicos (Ayalew, 2023). Este proceso persigue garantizar una representación equitativa en entidades gubernamentales y órganos decisorios (Alhassan, 2022), trascendiendo la mera presencia numérica para asegurar una influencia efectiva y la capacidad de defender intereses propios en la elaboración de políticas (Goel y Nelson, 2023). ...
La participación política de las mujeres enfrenta múltiples barreras, entre ellas la violencia sistemática, el limitado acceso a la educación y las restricciones al empoderamiento, factores que perpetúan la subrepresentación de las mujeres en espacios de toma de decisiones. Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo determinar la capacidad predictiva de la violencia de género, educación inclusiva y empoderamiento sobre la participación política de mujeres peruanas. Se desarrolló un estudio cuantitativo predictivo que incluyó a 383 mujeres de la provincia de San Martín, seleccionadas a través de un muestreo aleatorio simple. La evaluación de las variables se realizó mediante cuatro escalas validadas que demostraron alta fiabilidad (α entre .803 y .844). Los resultados evidenciaron niveles altos de violencia de género (50.7%), bajos niveles de educación inclusiva (51.7%), niveles medio de empoderamiento (74.2%) y una reducida participación política (88.5%). Se encontraron correlaciones significativas entre la participación política y las variables predictoras, encontrándose una correlación negativa con violencia de género (r=-.922) y correlaciones positivas con educación inclusiva (r=.612) y empoderamiento (r=.695). Asimismo, a través del análisis de regresión múltiple, el modelo explica el 67.5% de la varianza en participación política, identificando a la violencia de género (β=-.505, p<.001) y al empoderamiento (β=.387, p<.001) como principales predictores. Se concluye que para mejorar la participación política femenina es necesario abordar simultáneamente la reducción de la violencia de género y el fortalecimiento del empoderamiento.
... A part of the differential response of females might be due to their lack of networking which would make them more vulnerable to bribe solicitations and their different perceptions of corruption (Goel & Nelson, 2021). This suggests implications for (and spillovers from) gender empowerment policies being considered by various nations (Goel & Nelson, 2023; https://www.unfpa.org/resources/issue-7women-empowerment). Overall, this research has provided a more detailed examination of the nexus between the informal sector and corruption across countries by considering the prevalence of informal employment across different dimensions that vary significantly across individual nations. ...
This paper adds to the literature studying the substitution and complementarity between corruption and the shadow economy by focusing on the differential effects of various informal employment categories, by gender (informal employment by men vs. women) and across industries (informal employment in the agriculture vs. non‐agriculture sectors). Using cross‐national data, we find evidence of complementarity between corruption and informal employment, after accounting for possible simultaneity. This complementarity holds across different informal employment categories, with some quantitative differences. These findings have policy relevance for the coordination of anti‐corruption and anti‐underground‐economy policies, and whether such policies should be sector specific.
A long‐standing theory is that men value technology, while women focus more on human welfare and living conditions. Using data from 101 countries between 1996 and 2019, this study examines the impact of women's political participation on green innovation. Our results show that a one‐unit increase in women's political participation is positively associated with a 0.081 unit increase in the standard deviation of green innovation. This effect is particularly significant in developed countries where women's political participation is above the global average. Analysis using the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) shows a more pronounced effect at lower quantiles of green innovation in high‐carbon countries, due to women's heightened environmental sensitivity. Furthermore, implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, bureaucratic quality, and law and order strengthen this relationship. Accordingly, we identify countries that should prioritize improving women's political status, especially in patriarchal and Muslim societies.
Objective
This article considers the influence of female legislators on gun legislation across U.S. states. Females have behavioral differences with males and likely different exposure to gun‐related violence.
Method
Using data from 1991 to 2020, we estimate the drivers of gun legislation across U.S. states. The dependent variables are alternately the total number of gun laws enacted and 5‐year differences in gun laws.
Results
We find that female legislators in state houses significantly increase the supply of gun laws. Female senators, on the other hand, were no different from their male counterparts. In other results, states with greater population density had more gun laws, while economic prosperity, race, and the elderly population did not generally have significant effects. Finally, when special interest aspects, involving gun ownership, mass shooting episodes, and states with single‐party control of the legislative and executive branches are considered, mass shootings and single‐party control increase laws, while gun owners have the opposite effect. These findings show significance when 5‐year differences in gun laws are used.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that when it comes to gun legislation and female legislator representation, it matters which chamber of the legislature females are elected to. Furthermore, different interest groups can significantly bear upon gun legislation.
We empirically study the relationship between the gender composition and the performance of teams. In our setting, teams of students are incentivized to develop business plans as part of a compulsory course in a business administration program. At first sight, and in line with earlier empirical literature, the gender composition seems to matter. Our article differs in that we have access to a measure of task-specific individual ability. When controlling for ability, the relation between gender and team performance vanishes, highlighting the importance of controlling for other characteristics in empirical and experimental studies of gender effects. Objective: While various studies document a relationship between the gender composition and the performance of teams, we ask whether such findings may depend on a lack of controlling for other dimensions of heterogeneity among team members. Methods: In our setting, teams of students are incentivized to develop business plans as part of a compulsory course in a business administration program. Our article differs from the literature in that we have access to a measure of task-specific individual ability. Using ordinary least squares regressions, controlling for year and team size fixed effects, and conducting various robustness checks, we study the association between team performance and team characteristics. Results: At first sight, and in line with earlier empirical literature , the gender composition seems to matter for team performance. However, when controlling for the individual abilities of team members, the relation between the gender composition and team performance vanishes. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is noncommercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
We use experimental data to explore the conditions under which males and females may differ in their tendency to act corruptly and their tolerance of corruption. We ask if males and females respond differently to the tradeoff between the benefits accrued by corrupt actors versus the negative externality imposed on other people by corruption. Our findings reveal that neither males nor females uniformly are more likely to engage in, or be more tolerant of corruption: it depends on the exact bribery conditions—which can reduce or enhance welfare overall—and the part played in the bribery act. Females are less likely to tolerate and engage in corruption when doing so reduces overall welfare. On the other hand, males are less tolerant of bribery when it enhances welfare but confers payoff disadvantages on them relative to corrupt actors. Females’ behavior is consistent across roles when bribery reduces welfare, but apart from that, gender behavior is strongly role-dependent.
Whereas the influence of political regimes across various dimensions of economic and political performances has been considered by many scholars, the political regime-entre-preneurship relation has received relatively less attention. This paper uses data on a large sample of nations over two decades to examine the impact of different political regimes on nascent and established entrepreneurs. Results show that while the consideration of aggregate democracies boosts established entrepreneurs, it does not significantly affect nas-cent entrepreneurship. A unique finding is that border (spatial) democracies have positive spillovers on entrepreneurship in a nation and these spillovers hold across entrepreneurship types. Furthermore, the positive effects of political regimes are not confined to democracies and these influences vary across nascent and established entrepreneurs. Military regimes, however, consistently showed no significant impact on either form of entrepre-neurship considered. Finally, the introduction of corruption, capturing institutional weakness , shows that greater corruption acts as an impediment to entrepreneurship, offsetting some of the positive spillovers from political structures.
We investigate the effect of bureaucratic corruption on economic development when women are discriminated against in the labor market. The analysis is based on a dynamic general equilibrium model in which capital accumulation drives economic development. The government appoints bureaucrats to administer public policy. Corruption arises due to the opportunity for bureaucrats to embezzle public funds. In the event of detection and dismissal, the private sector serves as the bureaucrats' outside option. Our main results can be summarized as follows: first, when the public sector is a more gender‐equal employer than the private sector, female bureaucrats are less corrupt than male; second, corruption and development are jointly determined allowing the possibility of a poverty trap; and third, a policy to increase female participation in the public sector potentially reduces corruption and fosters economic development.
Adding to the research on the corruption and gender nexus, this paper contributes by several dimensions, including: (a) measurement of corruption across corruption perceptions and corruption experiences; (b) focusing on entrepreneurship level by studying whether female managers and female owners of firms perceived/experienced corruption differently; (c) using survey information at the firm level; and (d) employing a large sample of mostly developing nations covering more than 100 countries. Results show that female owners had greater corruption experience, ceteris paribus, while female managers perceived corruption to be lower. The perceptions of female managers, however, were sensitive when dimensions of gender equality were considered. With regard to firms’ characteristics, including firm’s age, size, and ownership, there was relatively greater support for these factors impacting corruption perceptions than corruption experience. All this underscores the need for effective corruption-control polices to pay attention to how corruption is measured, as well as the identity (gender) and position (owners or managers) of those underlying the relevant data.
Do men and women perceive corruption differently? While evidence suggest that there is a strong link between gender and corruption, and that gender differences can at least partly be derived from men and women having different attitudes towards corruption, most studies to date focus on gender differences in perceptions of the scale or severity of the corruption in general, rather than its different forms. However, we argue that factors such as role socialization, social status and life experiences may make men and women perceive different kinds of corruption. Drawing on the distinction between ‘need’ and ‘greed’ corruption, we suggest that women are more likely than men to perceive that corruption is driven by need rather than greed. In particular, women may be more likely to be exposed to need corruption because of their greater care taking responsibilities both in the professional and private sphere, and, much in line with marginalization theory, have easier access to forms of corruption that are less dependent upon embeddedness in collusive networks. Using unique survey data, we show that women and men indeed differ in their perceptions of need vs. greed, and that women perceive more need corruption, while men perceive more greed corruption. This suggests that perceptions of different forms of corruption are indeed gendered and we discuss the implication of this for anti-corruption policy.
Adding a somewhat new dimension to the substantial body of research on factors driving cross-national corruption, this paper examines the effectiveness of dimensions of enforcement in reducing corruption. The main novelty lies in comparing the relative influences of latent enforcement (police, judicial, and prosecutorial employment) versus actual enforcement (conviction rates) and enforcing institutions. Results show that piecemeal enforcement efforts to combat corruption by increasing enforcement employment would not be effective, rather comprehensive improvements in institutional quality by strengthening the rule of law or regulatory quality bear greater results. These findings are robust across indices of corruption that capture somewhat different aspects. Thus, in terms of the title of the paper, when it comes to corruption control, strong gums (institutions) are more effective than showing teeth (enforcement employment) or the bite (conviction rates).
Corruption has fierce impacts on economic and societal development and is subject to a vast range of institutional, jurisdictional, societal, and economic conditions. It is this paper's aim to provide a reassessment and a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of existing literature on corruption and its causes and effects. A particularly strong focus is put on presenting and discussing insights resulting from empirical research and contrasting recent with older findings.
Using cross-national panel data, Krause and Méndez recently studied whether voters retract support from political candidates who they think are corrupt. Their main finding is that corruption in public office is effectively punished by voters. Given the well-known issues with adequately measuring corruption, this note examines the sensitivity of extant findings to an alternate corruption measure. We fail to find a statistically robust effect of corruption on electoral outcomes.
This paper examines the effectiveness of corruption control depending upon whether the bribe taker or the bribe giver initiates the corrupt interaction. The probability of corrupt exchanges depends upon the bribe and the corrupt market structure. The probability of apprehension is set but punishment can be influenced via bribes. Results show that the effectiveness of apprehension hinges on whether higher bribes invite harsher fines. Competition for favors intimidates the bribe giver into offering lower bribes, while greater agency competition has a similar effect on the bribe demanded. Consistent with intuition, better paid bureaucrats demand smaller bribes. Some implications for anti-corruption policy are discussed.
Gender differences in competitiveness have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for gender differences in education
and labor market outcomes. We examine the predictive power of a standard laboratory experimental measure of competitiveness
for the later important choice of academic track of secondary school students in the Netherlands. Although boys and girls
display similar levels of academic ability, boys choose substantially more prestigious academic tracks, where more prestigious
tracks are more math- and science-intensive. Our experimental measure shows that boys are also substantially more competitive
than girls. We find that competitiveness is strongly positively correlated with choosing more prestigious academic tracks
even conditional on academic ability. Most important, we find that the gender difference in competitiveness accounts for a
substantial portion (about 20%) of the gender difference in track choice. JEL Codes: C9, I20, J24, J16.
"The topics of corruption and tax evasion have attracted significant attention in the literature in recent years. We build on that literature by investigating empirically: (1) whether attitudes toward corruption and tax evasion vary systematically with gender and (2) whether gender differences decline as men and women face similar opportunities for illicit behavior. We use data on eight Western European countries from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey. The results reveal significantly greater aversion to corruption and tax evasion among women. This holds across countries and time, and across numerous empirical specifications." ("JEL" H260, D730, J160, Z130) Copyright (c) 2010 Western Economic Association International.
This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors affecting bribe taking by public officials. Factors influencing the acceptance of bribes include: the probability of being convicted, severity of punishment, government salary relative to private sector income, the demonstration effect, and the unemployment rate. Our results indicate that higher probability of being convicted discourages the acceptance of bribes as does more severe punishment. Low relative earnings, high unemployment, and the demonstration effect of aggregate advertising all lead to increased bribe taking.
To what extent do ministries dominate a particular policy domain? The Policy Dictator Model and many principle‐agent models of governmental control that followed suit assume that governments create ministries with clear and exclusive policy responsibilities. We test this assertion using data of parliamentary bills from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. For each bill, we observe its substantial policy content and the responsible ministry. The data shows that bills on similar issues regularly are drafted by different ministries in parliamentary democracies. About 40% of policy issues cannot be ascribed to one dominant ministry. The regularities elucidate that ministerial division of labor within governments is considerably more complex than commonly assumed. The variegated level of ministerial dominance across policy domains calls for a new research agenda on how governments assign responsibility for legislative action in parliamentary democracies.
The continuing presence of corruption worldwide has policymakers looking for broader trans-national efforts to combat corruption. We examine the effects of a nation’s physical proximity (via land borders and the number of bordering nations) as well as prevailing corruption on cross-border corruption spillovers. Using data on 147 countries from 2012-2018, results show that while border corruption positively affects corruption in a nation, a longer land border, and more neighbors have a mitigating effect on corruption. Nesting the analysis in the literature on the determinants of cross-national corruption, these new findings imply that a nation’s geographic location might play a larger role in transmissions of corruption than previously recognized. This finding has relevance for the design of anti-corruption coordination across nations.
Risky choices often involve a tradeoff between expected payoff and payoff variability. Subjects in a simple experiment, however, exhibit more aversion to “downside risk” (with a small probability of a low payoff) and more attraction to “upside risk” (with a small probability of a high payoff). Women tend to be more averse than men for downside risk, but not for upside risk. These patterns are evaluated in terms of the utility curvature and probability weighting components of risk preferences. Gender differences in downside risk are relevant for the design of appropriately gender-tailored policies and algorithms for saving, financing, and entrepreneurship.
This study analyzes the impact of the gender composition of political institutions on the political budget cycle (PBC) and on the size and structure of public expenditure. An instrumental variable approach is implemented to evaluate the influence of female politicians in municipal councils. The introduction of gender quotas for Italian municipalities is used as an exogenous variation in female participation in politics. The results show that: (i) fluctuations in local public spending are only slightly affected by the presence of a wider female representation; (ii) an increase in the number of elected women reduces the overall amount of public expenditure; (iii) this reduction involves fields typically affected by PBC (e.g., roads' maintenance) except those related to females' needs (e.g., kindergarten, primary education, and social care).
I analyze the link between partisan alignment of local politicians and the incidence of political corruption, using novel hand-collected data on local political corruption in Ghana. The empirical analysis, based on 205 districts observed over the period 2013–2018, suggests significantly lower levels of political corruption in aligned districts. Partisan alignment reduces corruption by 1.9 percentage points, equivalent to about half of the mean-level in non-aligned districts. In line with political ambition theory, I attribute this result to local politicians aligned with the national government having incentives to control fiscal irregularities within their localities in order to appease their national party leaders and preserve their party’s reputation. Alternative explanations are considered through empirical means and can be excluded. The estimated effect is more pronounced in districts that (i) are party strongholds, (ii) have better financial endowments, and (iii) have female local parliamentarians. It appears that political centralization and a politicized bureaucracy, as observed in Ghana, are important explanations for this finding.
We conduct a field and an online classroom experiment to study gender differences in self-set performance goals and their effects on performance in a real-effort task. We distinguish between public and private goals, performance being public and identifiable in both cases. Participants set significantly more ambitious goals when these are public. Women choose lower goals than men in both treatments. Men perform better than women under private and public goals as well as in the absence of goal setting, consistent with the identifiability of performance causing gender differences, as found in other studies. Compared to private goal setting, public goal setting does not affect men's performance at all but it leads to women's performance being significantly lower. Comparing self-set goals with actual performance we find that under private goal setting women's performance is on average 67% of goals, whereas for men it is 57%. Under public goal setting the corresponding percentages are 43% and 39%, respectively.
Objective
This paper studies the direct and indirect impacts of political regimes on corruption. Whereas the interplay of government is fundamental to corrupt acts, the present research sheds new light by showing the direct and indirect influences of dimensions of government structure on corruption.
Methods
We employ two different estimation techniques. First, we use OLS regressions, with year and regional dummies. Second, we employ mediation analysis to account for the intermediate role of government size in the relation between government structure and corruption in order to gauge the direct and indirect influences on corruption
Results
Results show that government structure, across various dimensions of authoritarian and nonauthoritarian regimes, significantly impacted cross‐national corruption. In particular, a nation's stock of democracy and parliamentary systems lowered corruption, while executive tenure and dimensions of authoritarianism added to corruption. On the other hand, the size of the legislature did not matter when it came to corruption. However, the direct influences of these government structure variables are mitigated or reinforced when the intermediate role of government size is considered in a mediation analysis.
Conclusions
The breakdown into the direct and indirect effects on corruption is a novel insight of this work, with useful policy implications.
Objective
This article examines whether female managers and female owners of firms are better empowered in presidential or parliamentary democracies. Parliamentary democracies might be more responsive to the demands of special interest groups, while government decision making might be more streamlined in presidential democracies.
Methods
We use firm‐level data from the World Bank for more than 100 emerging and developing nations and employ the logistic estimation procedure.
Results
Results show that female owners of firms thrive in presidential democracies, but the effects on female managers were largely statistically insignificant. Other interesting findings include both female managers and female owners facing special challenges in nations with greater gender inequality, with female owners benefiting in nations with a larger informal sector.
Conclusions
Our results show that the type of democracy is relevant in female entrepreneurship, with female owners of firms thriving in presidential democracies, but not necessarily female managers.
Empirical findings of a negative association between female participation in politics and the labor market, and levels of corruption have received great attention. We reproduce this correlation for 177 countries from 1998 to 2014. However, once taking account of country-specific heterogeneity via fixed effects, these negative associations disappear, both in terms of statistical significance and magnitude. This suggests that female participation rates in politics and the labor market are not directly linked to lower corruption. Exploiting country-specific dimensions of culture, we then present evidence from pooled estimations suggesting that power distance and masculinity are systematically associated with both corruption and female participation rates. In fact, these two cultural characteristics are sufficient to fully explain the link between gender and corruption. Therefore, culture is an important dimension to consider when analyzing the relationship between female participation in society and corruption since the omission of cultural characteristics can produce a spurious correlation between increased female participation rates alone and reduced corruption levels.
This article offers the first comprehensive review of the interdisciplinary state of knowledge regarding anti-corruption policies, with a particular focus on reducing corruption among civil servants. Drawing on the work of economists, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, we examine seven policy categories: (1) rewards and penalties; (2) monitoring; (3) restructuring bureaucracies; (4) screening and recruiting; (5) anti-corruption agencies; (6) educational campaigns; and (7) international agreements. Notably, rigorous empirical evaluation is lacking for the majority of commonly prescribed anti- corruption policies. Nevertheless, we find growing evidence of the effectiveness of policies based on monitoring, including anti-corruption audits and e-governance. In addition, adequate civil service wages seem to be a necessary but insufficient condition for control of corruption. An emerging skepticism regarding the effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies also is apparent in the literature. We conclude with broader lessons drawn from our review, such as the recognition that when corruption is a systemic problem, it cannot be treated in the long term with individual-level solutions.
This paper examines in what roles women have an impact on corruption by focusing on female labor force participation and their presence in the parliament. Since much of the corruption literature is plagued either by the lack of instruments or weak instruments, this paper makes a methodological contribution by drawing inferences based on Moreira's (2003) conditional likelihood ratio approach. We provide robust evidence that women's presence in parliament has a causal and negative impact on corruption while other measures of female participation in economic activities are shown to have no effect. Further, this negative relationship between women's presence in government and corruption is also found to hold in a regional analysis of 17 European countries alleviating concerns that the relationship is driven by unobservable country-fixed characteristics. Finally, we show that this relationship does not disappear when women gain similarity in social status.
We use a laboratory experiment to investigate how the introduction of competition between public officials for the provision of a government service affects extortionary corruption, i.e., the demands of harassment bribes. We examine transactions that are likely to be one-shot, such as the delivery of a driver's license, and transactions that require frequent interactions between the parties and therefore allow for reputation building, such as yearly renewals of building permits. Finally, we examine officials’ ability to collude by communicating before setting their bribe demands. We find that introducing competition significantly reduces corruption both in settings characterized by one-shot and by repeated interactions between citizens and officials. While the possibility of collusion lowers the effectiveness of competition, officials are unable to sustain collusion in the long run.
Prior studies have lent mixed evidence on the effectiveness of increasing government wages to reduce corruption. Based on a dynamic principal-agent model, this study uses cross-country data over ten years (1999–2008) and various statistical models to present updated evidence. Our analyses show that increasing the government relative wage by one unit (i.e., by the amount of the average manufacturing wage in a country) is associated with a decrease in the level of perceived corruption by 0.26 units. The effect appears to be particularly significant for non-OECD countries (where corruption is more rampant) or for countries with a relatively low government wage. The overall policy implication is: Whereas increasing government wages can help curtail corruption, solely relying on government wages to reduce corruption can be very costly. For example, to reduce the level of corruption in non-OECD countries to that in OECD countries, the government wage would have to be increased by about seven times.
The last twenty-five years have witnessed dramatic growth in the number of political regimes that meet basic standards of procedural democracy, such as freedom of association and expression, competitive elections that determine who holds political power, and systematic constraints on the exercise of authority (Robert Dahl 1971; Samuel Huntington 1991). What has been called the “third wave of democracy” is driven by the confluence of various trends—the establishment of democracy in countries with no prior democratic experience, its reestablishment in countries that had experienced periods of authoritarian rule, and the expansion in the number of independent states following the demise of European and Soviet communism. A common consequence of these transitions is to focus attention on the constitutional rules that guide competition for and the exercise of political authority under democracy. One of the fundamental aspects of constitutional design is the choice between parliamentary government, presidential government, or a hybrid format that combines some aspects of these two.
We analyze close elections between male and female mayoral candidates in Brazilian municipalities to provide novel evidence on the role of women as policymakers. Using an objective measure of corruption based on random government audits, we find that female mayors are less likely to engage in corruption compared to male mayors. We also find that female mayors hire fewer temporary public employees than male mayors during the electoral year and tend to attract less campaign contributions when running for reelection. Moreover, our results show that female mayors have a lower reelection probability than male mayors. We interpret our findings as suggesting that male incumbents are more likely to engage in strategic behavior and this improves their electoral performance. Other explanations receive less support from the data.
Rising incidence of corruption and tax evasion in India in the recent years have attracted a great deal of attention and initiated intense debate on these issues. Motivated by this, the present study intends to examine two important research issues. First, we test the impact of bribe payment on firm's performance. Specifically, from an empirical point of view,we investigate two important but alternative hypotheses, namely ‘grease the wheels’ and ‘sand the wheels’. Second, we intend to identify firms that must pay bribe. The study is based on the enterprises survey data of the World Bank. The findings on the effects of bribe on firm's performance are rather mixed. We noted that bribe works as tax on profitability of firms and reduces efficiency. However, the evidence is inconclusive relating to productivity. On the other hand, bribing shows a positive effect on the firms’ export and product innovation. Therefore, the evidence provides support to both the hypotheses. Findings regarding who must pay bribe reveal that tax-evading firms are likely to pay greater bribes to the government officers. Furthermore, policy impediments are an important cause of bribe payment. Thus, it is the complexity in the system (policy or bureaucratic) which tends to raise the probability of paying bribes and dampen performance. In the light of these findings, policy implications are brought out.
On average, higher per capita income comes with lower corruption levels. Yet, countries like Mexico, Libya and Saudi Arabia are relatively wealthy but experience comparatively high corruption levels. Simultaneously, countries like Madagascar or Mozambique (in the 1990s) combine poor economic development with a low level of corruption. I propose that the two most common variables in corruption research – wealth and democracy – are mutually conditional: economic development brings about a larger (and stronger) middle class that demands public goods from the government. However, citizens’ ability to influence governmental decision-making varies by political regime type. In democracies, citizens are, on average, more successful in demanding goods from the government than in autocracies. Using a large-N approach (up to 139 countries, 1984–2006), the analysis finds robust empirical support for the proposed conditional effect.
This paper examines the effects of different competitions for favors on the prevalence and perceptions of corruption across Russian regions. Results show that while greater general competition (measured by regional population size), increases both perceived and actual corruption, competition among enterprises only increases corruption perceptions, while competition among government employees increases actual, but not perceived, corruption. Privatization activity and unemployment fail to affect either measure of corruption. Finally, the effects of urbanization differ on perceived and actual corruption. Besides Russia, these findings are somewhat unique to the broader literature.
Scholars have argued that recruiting more women to office is an effective way to curb corruption; however, the more precise mechanisms underlying why this may be the case have remained unclear. We use meso-level theories to elaborate on the relationship and suggest that institutional logics mediate the effect of gendered experiences on corruption. We make two propositions: First, we suggest that the relationship between more women and lower levels of corruption is weaker in the state administration than in the legislative arena, because the bureaucratic administrative logic absorbs actors’ personal characteristics. Second, we refine our institutional argument by claiming that the stronger the bureaucratic principles are in the administration, the less gender matters. We validate our theory using data provided by the European Commission (EC) covering the EC countries and original data from the Quality of Government Institute Expert Surveys, covering a larger set of countries on a worldwide scale.
What does the value of political equality imply for the institutional design of democracies? The existing normative literature highlights the importance of proportional representation and legislative majority rule, but neglects the choice of an executive format. This paper explores two potential egalitarian trade-offs in this choice. First, while presidential systems tend to achieve too little bundling of separable decision-making issues (within political parties), parliamentary systems often tend towards too much bundling (between political parties), thus establishing informal veto positions in the democratic process. This is a trade-off between the ‘adversarial’ and ‘deliberative’ aspects of equality. Second, there is a trade-off between ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ equality. Neither pure presidentialism nor pure parliamentarism may be able to maximise both dimensions of equality simultaneously. The paper argues that certain hybrids between parliamentarism and presidentialism have the potential to mitigate both trade-offs. These hybrids establish power separation between the executive and legislature without allowing for popular executive elections. The argument also has potential implications for the democratisation of the European Union.
The link between gender inequality and economic growth is a topic that is of growing interest, both in the academic literature and the policy arena. In this paper, we survey the literature that analyses this relationship from a macroeconomic perspective. We argue that that the existing theories provide a wide range of mechanisms through which these two variables may affect each other but also that more work needs to be carried out to obtain quantitative predictions out of these models. In the empirical arena, we note the lack of connection between most studies and the existing theories described earlier. In both cases, we propose approaches to alleviate these problems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ABSTRACT The measurement of socio-economic gender inequality has not received much attention from the development literature despite its great relevance and important policy implications. In this article we present two new indices to measure gender inequalities that overcome some of the limitations inherent in the UNDP gender-related indices and other indices presented in the literature. The proposed new indices are conducive to exploring the extent to which gender gaps favour women and/or men, and to showing the contribution of the different subcomponents to the overall levels of gender inequality. Using UNDP data, our calculations suggest that the levels of gender inequality are mostly explained by differences in the earned-income subcomponent and that the average difference between women's and men's achievement levels has been reduced by 12 per cent during the period 1995–2005.
Evidence from the International Crime Victimization Survey and the World Business Environment Survey suggests that actual corruption experience is a weak predictor of reported corruption perception, and that some of the factors commonly found to "reduce" corruption, such as economic development, democratic institutions or Protestant traditions, systematically bias corruption perception indices downward from corruption experience. In addition, perception indices are influenced by absolute (as opposed to relative) levels of corruption, which tends to penalize large countries, and they exhibit diminishing sensitivity to both absolute and relative corruption, indicating that they may better capture differences among countries with low levels of corruption than among highly corrupt ones. Individual characteristics such as education, age, or employment status, and firm-level characteristics such as the number of competitors are also found to influence corruption perceptions holding experience constant.
Women’s empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment-development nexus, and argues that the inter-relationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Quotas to promote women’s representation in the world’s legislatures have spread to more than one hundred countries in recent years. The diffusion of gender quotas poses a puzzle since they have often been adopted in countries where women seem to have an otherwise low status. I argue that international influence and inducements do the best job of explaining quota adoption in developing countries. Promoting gender equality, including through gender quotas, has become a key part of international democracy promotion. Gender quotas’ international legitimacy influences domestic politics in two ways: by directly influencing post-conflict constitutions via liberalizing peace operations and by indirectly encouraging countries, especially ones that depend on foreign aid, to signal their commitment to democracy by adopting quotas. Using an event history analysis that controls for other relevant factors, I find that the hypothesized relationships exist. I then trace the causal process in the case of Afghanistan’s 2004 quota.
The role of the president is presumed to vary amongst presidential, semi-presidential and parliamentary systems. However, there are a variety of subtypes within semi-presidential systems. Debate often hinges on the prime minister and government, and to whom they are more accountable. However, the accountability of prime ministers and governments to presidents can be rather ‘fuzzy’. This article looks through the prism of the president rather than that of the government. After examining definitions of presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, several dispositional categories of political regimes will be established. Then presidential power will be assessed through a series of dichotomous measures, and for all electoral democracies with a president. Finally, the character of each category will be assessed. The concept of ‘semi-presidentialism’ is rejected in favour of more meaningful labels: presidential systems, parliamentary systems with presidential dominance, parliamentary systems with a presidential corrective and parliamentary systems with figurehead presidents.
The search for a sustainable anti-corruption strategy has seen a number of reform ideas introduced into the public sector of many African countries, by the development community. These reforms have met with modest results, at best, as evidenced by the fact that current data suggest entrenched corruption in many African countries. Failure of previous anti-corruption strategies leads to the promotion of women in the public sector as a potential anti-corruption remedy. This nascent idea is premised on presumptions that women are more ethical than men. However, failure of previous anti-corruption strategies begs legitimate questions: would women prove less corrupt when exposed to environments characterised by corrupt opportunities and networks? Would women maintain high ethical standards in the public realm when social obligations require certain acts of corruption? This article uses primary data from Ghana to address these questions. The article concludes that women may not prove less corrupt in the public sector if corrupt opportunities and networks are not restrained. Also, the very gender system, which is used to justify women's proclivity to less corrupt behaviour and subsequent integration into the public sector, could itself be the source of corruption as women attempt to fulfil their gender roles. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This study uses a cross-country panel to examine the determinants of corruption, paying particular attention to political institutions that increase accountability. Even though the theoretical literature has stressed the importance of political institutions in determining corruption, the empirical literature is relatively scarce. Our results confirm the role of political institutions in determining the prevalence of corruption. Democracies, parliamentary systems, political stability, and freedom of press are all associated with lower corruption. Additionally, common results of the previous empirical literature, related to openness and legal tradition, do not hold once political variables are taken into account.
This paper examines the existence of any relations between globalization and corruption using cross-section data for 127 countries. The estimation results indicate that, under the assumption of a linear model, a positive correlation between corruption and globalization exists, while when linearity is dropped there seems to be no significant effect of globalization on corruption. According to our analysis, linearity is a good approximation only for middle and high income countries. Hence, our main conclusion is that globalization is a powerful weapon against corruption only for middle and high income countries, while for low income countries globalization has no significant impact on corruption. For such countries fighting corruption requires additional global action aiming at the reduction of poverty.
Parliamentary democracy has been widely embraced bypoliticians and especially by the scholarly communitybut remains less widely understood. In this essay, Iidentify the institutional features that defineparliamentary democracy and suggest how they can beunderstood as delegation relationships. I proposetwo definitions: one minimal and one maximal (orideal-typical). In the latter sense, parliamentarydemocracy is a particular regime of delegation andaccountability that can be understood with the help ofagency theory, which allows us to identify theconditions under which democratic agency problems mayoccur. Parliamentarism is simple, indirect, andrelies on lessons gradually acquired in the past. Compared to presidentialism, parliamentarism hascertain advantages, such as decisional efficiency andthe inducements it creates toward effort. On theother hand, parliamentarism also implies disadvantagessuch as ineffective accountability and a lack oftransparency, which may cause informationalinefficiencies. And whereas parliamentarism may beparticularly suitable for problems of adverseselection, it is a less certain cure for moral hazard.In contemporary advanced societies, parliamentarism isfacing the challenges of decaying screening devicesand diverted accountabilities
Of all the links in the democraticdelegation chain, the first link (from voters tolegislators) may be fraught with the greatestpotential for agency losses. Voters – the ultimateprincipals – may lack the information and resourcesto select the best legislators and subsequently ensurethat they do the public's bidding. This paper usessome of the insights of the principal-agent approachto examine the Voter-MP relationship by focusingprimarily on two sets of organisational andinstitutional rules: methods of candidate selectionand electoral laws. Since the emphasis is on directlinks between voters and legislators (rather than onthe intermediary role of parties), we examineelectoral laws in terms of the incentives they providefor candidates to seek a personal vote. Since agencylosses are most likely when the MPs' careers do notdirectly depend on voters, electoral systems arearranged on a continuum from party-centred systems(little or no incentive to seek personal votes), tointermediate systems (limited effectiveness ofpersonal voting) to candidate-centred systems (wherepersonal voting is most effective). One of thearguments is that a trade-off often exists between thedirectness of the link between voter and agent and thechoice of agents that is crucial to voters' abilitiesto sanction agents. If it is thought desirable thatvoters have the ability to directly sanctionrepresentatives, then an institutional designinvolving effective preferential voting in districtsof moderate magnitude should be optimal.