Eric C. C. Chang

Corruption and Trust: Exceptionalism in Asian Democracies?

While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the negative impact of corruption. Utilizing data from the East Asia Barometer, we find a strong trust-eroding effect of political corruption in Asian democracies. We also find no evidence that contextual factors lessen the corruption-trust link in Asia. The trust-eroding effect holds uniformly across all countries examined in this study and remains robust even after taking into account the endogenous relationship between corruption and trust.

Legislative malfeasance and political accountability

Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity from deputies suspected of criminal wrongdoing, the authors analyze the political careers of members of the Chamber during the first eleven postwar legislatures (1948–94). They find that judicial investigation typically did not discourage deputies from standing for reelection in Italys large multimember electoral districts. They also show that voters did not punish allegedly malfeasant legislators with loss of office until the last (Eleventh) legislature in the sample. To account for the dramatic change in voter behavior that occurred in the early 1990s, the investigation focuses on the roles of the judiciary and the press. The results are consistent with a theory that a vigilant and free press is a necessary condition for political accountability in democratic settings. An independent judiciary alone is ineffective in ensuring electoral accountability if the public is not informed of political malfeasance.

Competitive Corruption: Factional Conflict and Political Malfeasance in Postwar Italian Christian Democracy

This article studies the relationship between cartels of politicians and systemic political corruption in a democratic setting. Some electoral systems, including open-list systems of proportional representation, encourage intraparty competition for office. The authors analyze the relationship between intraparty conflict in postwar Italys dominant political party, the Christian Democrats, and charges of malfeasance against Christian Democratic members of the Chamber of Deputies in the years between the first postwar parliamentary elections of 1948 and the end of the XI legislature in 1994, when the electoral system was substantially modified. Suspected malfeasance is operationalized as requests by the judiciary to lift parliamentary immunity in order to proceed with an investigation of a member of the Chamber of Deputies. Results show a significant statistical relationship between intraparty conflict and alleged corruption on the part of dc deputies starting in the early 1970s. These results are interpreted to mean that the dramatic levels of political corruption observed in Italy in recent decades were in part an outgrowth of the search for campaign funds by incumbent dc members of parliament in competition with other candidates from the same party. Electoral competition with other parties did not significantly affect the extent of charges of malfeasance against dc deputies. Using maps, the authors also provide preliminary evidence that Italian corruption did not spread from south to north in a process of cultural contagion, as is commonly believed. Instead, they find, the determinants of corruption appear to be endogenous to institutions of the postwar political system.

State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa Forwards, Backwards, or Together?

Across sub-Saharan Africa, new democracies emerge only in the context of relatively effective states. Using aggregate indicators of democracy and governance plus new public opinion data, the authors show which aspects of state building are most important. The scope of state infrastructure and the delivery of welfare services have little impact on democratization. But the establishment of a rule of law—as experienced through improvements in personal security and the popular perception that leaders respect the constitution—is critical to building democracy. But because the legitimacy of the state is itself a reciprocal product of democratization, studies of African states and regimes, presently separated, should be connected.

Electoral Incentives and Budgetary Spending: Rethinking the Role of Political Institutions

This paper reconciles the long-standing debate on electorally motivated government spending by embedding politicians’ electoral incentives in political institutions. Using budgetary spending data from 21 OECD countries from 1973 to 2000, this paper shows that electoral budgetary cycles take the form of higher district-specific spending under single-member district systems and higher social welfare spending under proportional representation systems. This study also shows that budgetary cycles are constrained by multiple veto players. The results remain robust even after taking into account the effect of exchange rate regimes and the possibility of strategically timed elections.

Electoral Systems and Real Prices: Panel Evidence for the OECD Countries, 1970 2000

In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and votes (producers). When producers provide only money, the intuition becomes apparent even without a model: politicians respond more to voters under (majoritarian) systems in which a small change in vote share can produce a large change in seat share. Cross-sectional evidence for the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in 1990 was strongly supportive, suggesting that real prices were, all else equal, about 10 per cent lower in the averageOECDcountry with single-member district (SMD) electoral systems than in those that used some form of proportional representation (PR). As with all new empirical claims, healthy scepticism is warranted. Indeed, recent research in related areas has to be contrasted with – but it has not contradicted – these price results, associating proportional electoral arrangements with more positive social welfare outcomes including (a) less income inequality, (b) higher public spending, or, in combination with central banking institutions, (c) greater price stability. We acknowledge the possible incongruity of these results with those of Rogowski and Kayser; after all, verification of the price effects would suggest a more complicated relationship between electoral institutions and social welfare than is indicated in the extant literature.

Electoral systems and the balance of consumer-producer power

1. Introduction 2. Electoral systems and consumer power: theoretical considerations 3. Electoral systems and real prices: panel evidence for the OECD countries 4. Electoral systems and real prices around the world 5. A closer look: case studies and mechanisms 6. Socio-economic origins of electoral systems 7. Discussion and conclusion.

Jong-sung You, Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared

could not be optimally channelled into more productive expenditures (318). In the same vein, in their chapter, Dinna Wisnu, Faisal Basri and Gatot Arya Putra note Yudhoyono’s reluctance to reduce fuel subsidies. Moreover, they suggest, his reliance on social assistance, such as cash transfers, could not effectively empower the poor to receive improved health access and education, since it was distributed thinly and unevenly and occasionally with no productive outcomes for the poor (330). However, none of these three chapters goes into any detail about fuel subsidies, seemingly only viewing them as market distorting. At the end of his term in office, Yudhoyono’s administration wrestled with corruption cases involving his inner circle and even some corruption allegations against his own son. As a result, his Democrat Party was punished, finishing in fourth place in the general election of 2014. Yudhoyono had initially been elected with tremendous support, but in the waning days of his administration, his personality and the unchanged character of politics inherited from the New Order era hampered his government, preventing it from pushing for more comprehensive reforms, particularly in the aforementioned areas. Throughout, the book gives little attention to the role of other actors in Indonesia’s political economy, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which played a critical and decisive role in shaping Yudhoyono’s governance, particularly on issues of human rights, corruption, the environment and decentralisation. The role of NGOs is part of a pluralist politics – emphasising a range of actors – along with oligarchic economic actors and the cartelisation of politics in understanding Indonesia’s post-authoritarian political landscape. Nonetheless, this edited collection with authors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, offers useful critical assessments of Yudhoyono’s two presidential terms.

Preferential Trade Agreements, Income Inequality, and Authoritarian Survival:

This paper investigates the political and economic consequences of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in authoritarian countries. Based on the Heckscher–Ohlin model of international trade and theories of inequality and regime transition, this paper argues that dictators sign PTAs as a means of consolidating their authoritarian rule. Specifically, PTAs help dictators reduce economic inequality by enriching poor laborers and thereby attenuating the threat of regime collapse. We support our theory with the data from seventy-odd authoritarian regimes from 1960 to 2006, and contribute to ongoing debates about the effects of both income inequality and economic globalization on autocratic resilience.