Marcia Grimes

Curbing Corruption Through Social Welfare Reform? The Effects of Mexico's Conditional Cash Transfer Program on Good Government

Conditional cash transfer programs, an innovation in social welfare administration, have received considerable acclaim as a means of enhancing human capital and reducing leakage of public resources through corruption. While numerous studies examine the effects of the program on human capital indicators in Mexico and various other countries that have adopted the approach, little is known about the effects of these programs on levels of corruption and on political life more generally. Using data from Transparency International Mexico, the Federal Register of Civil Society Organizations, and the national census, this paper analyzes whether conditional cash transfers have any bearing on corruption but also on two other aspects of political life argued to affect government probity in the long term: the density of civil society organizations and the empowerment of women as indicated by levels of active involvement in civil society. The conclusions are encouraging with respect to reducing corruption but rather dismal regarding the effects on civil society and the empowerment of women.

Institutions as Incentives for Civic Action: Bureaucratic Structures, Civil Society, and Disruptive Protests

This paper examines the link between political control of government bureaucracies and citizens’ likelihood to stage disruptive protests. A public administration heavily controlled by politicians, and staffed to a large extent with political appointees, allows politicians to intervene in policy implementation and favor some groups over others in terms of access to public services. Such a system may induce citizens or civic associations to resort to disruptive actions to express demands and demonstrate political relevance, and thereby secure access to public goods. The effects are hypothesized to be more pronounced where civil society is stronger. We test the arguments empirically on data from 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the findings are consistent with the hypotheses.

Government Responsiveness: A Democratic Value with Negative Externalities?

Political equality and responsiveness to citizens are both central values in democracy. Citizens strong in political resources may, however, impress their preferences upon decision makers more effectively than others, meaning that government responsiveness may possibly exacerbate inequality in policy outcomes, especially if participatory democratic arrangements are prevalent. The article studies these processes empirically, drawing on a dataset of the siting of unwanted facilities in two Swedish cities. Indicative of the tension between equality and responsiveness, we find that residents’ political resources affect facility siting in the local district.

Political Control of Bureaucracies as an Incentive for Party Behavior

Clientelism, the practice of wooing voters with particularistic payoffs rather than programmatic policies, is a scourge of many contemporary democracies, and may substantially undercut the will and capacity of political elites to address broad societal issues such as inequality or underdevelopment. Recent years have seen renewed interest in exploring clientelism as a social and political phenomenon (e.g., Stokes et al., 2013), as well as understanding the factors that might induce, propel or prevent parties from transitioning to more programmatic approaches to contests in the electoral arena (Keefer, 2007; Weitz-Shapiro, 2012). The bulk of this latter strand of research explores the economic conditions that constitute more, or less, fertile soil for clientelism (Hicken, 2011; Weitz-Shapiro, 2012). This chapter draws on research from the field of public administration (e.g., Peters and Pierre, 2004; Dahlstrom et al., 2012; Grindle, 2012), and argues that the institutional framework structuring the interface between input (policy making) and output (policy implementing) institutions in the political system is a crucial component in political parties’ choices of whether to attract voters via clientelistic or via programmatic linkage strategies. In doing so, this chapter seeks to contribute to the investigation of the interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between specific institutional arrangements on the one hand, and parties’ choices of linkage strategies with voters on the other (Geddes, 1994; Shefter, 1994).

Gender and Corruption in Mexico: Building a Theory of Conditioned Causality

In an effort to further elucidate the mechanisms linking womens representation to lower levels of corruption this study suggests that the impetus for women’s entry into politics is often exogenous to political organizations and therefore, once successful, may disrupt existing “modus operandi” of politics, creating a window of opportunity for subsequent change. If anti-corruption efforts concurrently figure on the policy agenda, then changes both in formal laws and informal norms related to corruption may ensue. The chapter builds on panel data from a biennial household survey in Mexico which allows for a nuanced examination of the link, both (i) whether the presence of corruption adversely affects women’s entry into politics, and (ii) whether women, once elected, affect the prevalence of corruption. The chapter points to concomitant conditions necessary for positive developments especially in contexts in which corruption has been highly prevalent.