Nicholas Charron

Regional Governance Matters: Quality of Government within European Union Member States

Charron N., Dijkstra L. and Lapuente V. Regional governance matters: quality of government within European Union member states, Regional Studies. This study presents novel data (European QoG Index – EQI) on the ‘quality of government’ (QoG) – understood as low corruption, impartial public services and rule of law – for national and sub-national levels in twenty-seven European Union countries. The EQI shows notable within-country variations: while high-performing regions in Italy and Spain (for example, Bolzano, País Vasco) rank amongst the best European Union regions, others perform well below the European Union average. The index is highly correlated with sub-national levels of socio-economic development and levels of social trust, yet political decentralization is uncorrelated with greater within-country, or higher levels of overall, QoG.

Why Do Some Regions in Europe Have a Higher Quality of Government

While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutional puzzle of why regions which share so many formal institutions (e.g., Northern and Southern Italy) do diverge so much in quality of government. Similar to recent political economy scholarship, our theory points to historical path dependencies. The study argues that a major factor explaining regional path dependencies is the consolidation of clientelistic networks in those regions where rulers have historically (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) less constraints to their decisions.

The Impact of Socio-Political Integration and Press Freedom on Corruption

Abstract The analyses in this study demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of a previously understood phenomenon – that openness has a negative relationship with corruption. It is argued that this relationship is substantially influenced by the domestic context, a relationship that has been underdeveloped by previous empirical studies. Focusing on social and political integration, I find that the effect of openness on corruption is conditioned by domestic institutions. The empirical evidence suggests that while political and social openness have a significant impact in combating corruption given a free press, the impact of such international forces are negligible in cases where press freedoms are low.