Constitutional power concentration and corruption: evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean
- PDF / 1,077,703 Bytes
- 28 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 20 Downloads / 192 Views
Constitutional power concentration and corruption: evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean Andrea Sáenz de Viteri Vázquez1 · Christian Bjørnskov2,3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Just as its constitutional development is characterised by frequent change and substantial concentration of power, the Latin American and the Caribbean area is known to host some of the most corrupt countries of the world. A group of countries such as Chile, Barbados and Uruguay, however, report levels of corruption similar to those displayed by most European countries. We ask whether the concentration of power in the executive, as well as in the national parliament in this particular region, affect how corrupt a society is. Using panel data from 22 Latin America and Caribbean countries from 1970 to 2014, we find that constitutional power concentration is in fact a determinant of corruption. Yet, the constitutional provisions allocating powers of government appear only to be consistently important when parliament is ideologically fractionalised. Keywords Corruption · Constitutional political economy · Power concentration · Ideology JEL codes D72 · K42 · P16 “It is not just the bad people who effect corruptionbut the institutions that make it possible” LessigL. (2011). Republiclost: How money corrupts congress and a plan to stop it. New York: Hachette
* Christian Bjørnskov [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, University of Navarra, Edificio Amigo, 31009 Pamplona, Spain
2
Department of Economics, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark
3
Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), P.O. Box 55665, 102 15 Stockholm, Sweden
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
A. S. de Viteri Vázquez, C. Bjørnskov
1 Introduction The Latin American and the Caribbean areas are known to host some of the most corrupt countries of the world. Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela consistently experience high levels of corruption, similar to levels reached in Bangladesh and large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, Barbados and Chile have traditionally experienced low corruption levels similar to those in Northern European countries, while Uruguay is about as corrupt as those in Southern Europe. Despite differences in nature, context, and political dynamics, corruption—typically defined as the abuse of public power for personal gains—is present in all governments. A long list of studies has therefore emerged that attempt to find causal explanations of corruption (Ades and Di Tella 1999; Treisman 2002) and its detrimental effects on economic development and growth, as well as a number of features of social development (Rose-Ackerman 1999; World Bank 2001; Gupta et al. 2002; Bjørnskov and Freytag 2016). Although there is an evident relationship between corruption and particular differences in political institutions, relatively few papers have empirically studied this connection (Montinola and Jackman 2002; Dreher et al. 2008) and even fewer have explored the links between corruption and d
Data Loading...
