Corruption and the Incumbency Disadvantage: Theory and Evidence

Klašnja, Marko

doi:10.1086/682913

Cited by 109 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…This might reflect important differences in the level of decentralization and the fragmentation of the party system. The paper also relates to the dis-incumbency effect literature (Klašnja, 2015;Klašnja and Titiunik, 2017;Uppal, 2009). Our party alignment results for mayoral elections are consistent with Klašnja and Titiunik (2017) in that party incumbency is likely to be a disadvantage when running for reelection when the party system is weak.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Political alignment in the time of weak parties : electoral advantages and subnational transfers in Colombia

Bonilla‐Mejía¹,

Higuera-Mendieta²

2017

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This paper explores the effect of alignment between local and national politics in a context of weak parties. Based on a regression discontinuity design in close elections, we find that, in absence of strong parties, presidential coalitions become the focal point of political alignment in Colombia. In fact, while parties provide almost no electoral advantages to their members, candidates aspiring to national positions get significantly more votes in municipalities governed by mayors aligned with the incoming presidential coalitions. In turn, aligned mayors receive additional discretionary transfers from the National Government to finance road investments. These discretionary transfers, however, do not translate into local economic growth. ResumenEste documento explora el efecto de alineación entre politicos locales y nacionales en un contexto de partidos débiles. Utilizando métodos de regresión discontinua en elecciones reñidas, encontramos que en ausencia de partidos fuertes, las coaliciones presidenciales se convierten en los ejes de la alineación política en Colombia. De hecho, mientras que los partidos políticos proveen muy pocas ventajas electorales a sus miembros, los candidatos de la coalición a posiciones nacionales obtienen muchos más votos en municipios gobernados por alcaldes alineados. A su vez, los alcaldes alineados reciben más transferencias discrecionales para financiar carreteras por parte del gobierno nacional. Estas transferencias, sin embargo, no se traducen en mayor crecimiento económico en los municipios.Palabras clave: Alineación política, elcciones, transferencias subnacionales, regresión discontinua Clasificaciión JEL: D72, H72, H77, R11 3 The Regional Development and Regional Compensation Funds account for at least 40% of the royalties and prioritizes high impact projects in the poorest regions. Resources are allocated by regional committees,Órganos Colegiados de Administración y Decisión (OCAD), in which national and local officers evaluate and select the projects. 4 There is a long tradition of discretionary transfers in Colombia. Co-financing funds are among the most recent ones, replacing the Auxilios Parlamentarios, parliamentary funds that were eliminated in 1991 in an attempt to eradicate pork-barrel politics Brun and Diamond (2014); Cárdenas et al. (2006). 7

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Political alignment in the time of weak parties : electoral advantages and subnational transfers in Colombia

Bonilla‐Mejía¹,

Higuera-Mendieta²

2017

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“…The primary methodological innovation of this article is the development of comparative indicators of institutionalized grand corruption in public procurement for both countries, which addresses a gap long recognized in the literature (Knack 2006). Our approach builds on prior scholarship with similar datasets, making use of a range of public procurement "red flags" across Europe (Klasnja 2016;Mungiu-Pippidi 2016;Charron et al 2017;Fazekas & Kocsis 2017). The measurement approach exploits the fact that for institutionalized grand corruption to work, procurement contracts have to be awarded recurrently to companies belonging to the corrupt network.…”

Section: Indicators Of Institutionalized Grand Corruptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Fazekas

King

2018

Regulation & Governance

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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.

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“…(M. M. Bechtel & Hainmueller, 2011), while corrupt leaders may be punished at the polls (Klašnja, 2015). In addition, efficient handling of relief funds may serve as a signal of (local or national) government presence and competence even for voters in localities which may not have been directly affected by the disaster.…”

Section: The Drivers Of Corruption In Local Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Public Fund Windfalls Increase Corruption? Evidence From a Natural Disaster

Nikolova

Marinov

2017

Comparative Political Studies

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We show that unexpected financial windfalls increase corruption in local government. Our analysis uses a new data set on flood-related transfers, and the associated spending infringements, which the Bulgarian central government distributed to municipalities following torrential rains in 2004 and 2005. Using information from the publicly available audit reports we are able to build a unique objective index of corruption. We exploit the quasi-random nature of the rainfall shock (conditional on controls for ground flood risk) to isolate exogenous variation in the amount of funds received by each municipality. Our results imply that a 10 % increase in the per capita amount of disbursed funds leads to a 9.8% increase in corruption. We also present suggestive evidence that more corrupt mayors anticipated punishment by voters and dropped out of the next election race. Our results highlight the governance pitfalls of non-tax transfers, such as disaster relief or assistance from international organizations, even in moderately strong democracies.

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Corruption and the Incumbency Disadvantage: Theory and Evidence

Cited by 109 publications

References 47 publications

Political alignment in the time of weak parties : electoral advantages and subnational transfers in Colombia

Political alignment in the time of weak parties : electoral advantages and subnational transfers in Colombia

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

Do Public Fund Windfalls Increase Corruption? Evidence From a Natural Disaster

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