One Size Fits All? Decentralization, Corruption, and the Monitoring of Bureaucrats

By Christian Lessmann, Gunther Markwardt. Social Science Research Network, 2010

197 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The majority of theoretical and empirical studies on the relationship between decentralization and corruption argues that the devolution of power might be a feasible instrument to keep corruption at bay. We argue that this result crucially depends on the effectiveness of monitoring bureaucrat’s behavior. The benefits of interjurisdictional competition only occur if there is a supervisory body such as a free press, which is often lacking in less-developed countries. Using cross-country data, we analyze the relationship between decentralization and corruption taking different degrees of the freedom of the press into account. Our main finding is that decentralization counteracts corruption in countries with high degrees of press freedom, whereas countries without effective monitoring suffer from decentralization. Our policy implication is that a free press is a necessary pre-condition for successful decentralization programs.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/61fd07ad494727e6f96b6520393660870f708627

Citations in the corpus

• The Impact of Democracy and Press Freedom on Corruption: Conditionality Matters (2013, unknown): “Montinola and Jackman (2002) accentuate that without the reduction of the power of politics, corruption in countries with an intermediate level of democracy is higher than in less democratic countries.”
• Regional Inequality and Decentralization: An Empirical Analysis (2012, unknown): “Moreover, decentralization might increase corruption and cronyism in developing countries, undermining potential effi ciency gains (Bardhan, 2002; Lessmann and Markwardt, 2010).”