Economic Crisis, Bureaucratic Quality and Democratic Breakdown

Abstract

Why do economic crises sometimes lead to democratic breakdown and sometimes not? To answer this question, we bring in a new conditioning factor. We propose that bureaucracies of higher quality – implying more competent, efficient and autonomous employees – to a greater extent shield the masses from impoverishment and unjust distribution of resources. This dampens anti-regime mass mobilization, which decreases elite incentives and opportunities for toppling the democratic regime. Statistical analyses of democracies globally from 1903 to 2010 corroborate that the impact of economic crises on the risk of democratic breakdown is suppressed when democracies have a bureaucracy of higher quality. The results are robust to alternative model specifications, including a battery of ‘good governance’ indicators. The effect of bureaucratic quality is not driven by bureaucracies’ ability to hinder crisis onset or shorten crisis duration but rather their ability to decrease domestic upheavals during crises.

Corrupción administrativa y terrorismo: Un distanciamiento considerable entre intereses y publicaciones

“…Otra cuestión surge del análisis de los datos y se presenta en estudios que re tratan las grandes desigualdades provocadas por gobiernos corruptos y el poder económico: el incremento de la corrupción durante las grandes crisis económicas, que a su vez incrementa las crisis humanitarias causando grandes catástrofes (Avi lés, 2019). Es recurrente que tales crisis humanitarias, provocadas por un colapso democrático, disminuyan cuando las democracias tienen una burocracia de mayor calidad (Krishnarajan, 2019). El exceso de trámites en los procesos administrativos es visto como una herramienta que favorece la ca.…”

Where is the middle? Considering the socio-political centre in Germany

“…Crises disturb any society and Germany's more acutely than most (Anderson & Krishnarajan, 2019;Hertner & Miskimmon, 2015;Hutter & Kriesi, 2019b). The public has high expectations that politicians ensure competent management and rapid resolution of those crises that do occur.…”

State international income position, trade openness, and mass antigovernment protests

“…Bermeo and Bartels, 2014; Grasso and Giugni, 2016; Lehman-Wilzig and Ungar, 1985; Yagci, 2017), given that a plummeting economy tends to provoke people's sense of relative deprivation and suggest the failure of some policy or/and incompetence of political incumbents. And economic failure threatens the survival of democratic regimes (Andersen and Krishnarajan, 2019). By contrast, theorists like Lipset (1959) posit that economic development drives civic movements because public demands for political participation are aroused as citizens’ material possessions grow.…”