The Quality of Government in a Comparative Perspective

All readings are available online through the University’s subscription or will be uploaded onto Canvas.

For the entire course
Bågenholm, A., Bauhr, M., Grimes, M and B. Rothstein, Bo. 2021. Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government. Chicago University Press. (available online through GU library).

Recommended:
The webpage of the Quality of Government Institute (http://www.qog.pol.gu.se), where QoG-related data and publications can be found.

What is Quality of Government?
Rothstein, Bo. 2021. Quality of Government: Theory and Conceptualization. In Bågenholm, Bauhr, Grimes and Rothstein (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 3-24.

Rothstein, Bo and Jan Teorell. 2008. What is Quality of Government: A Theory of Impartial Political Institutions, Governance 21(2):165-190.

Agnafors, Marcus. 2013. Quality of Government: Toward a More Complex Definition, American Political Science Review 107(3): 433-445.

Sparling, Robert Alan. 2017. Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption, Political Studies 66(2): 376-391.

**QoG: What do you get?
**Nistotskaya, Marina. 2020. Quality of Government (QoG) as Impartiality: Review of the literature on causes and consequences of QoG, KIPA (Korean Institute of Public Administration) Public Policy Review 1: 25-49.

Ahlerup, Pelle, Thushyanthan Baskaran, and Arne Bigsten. 2016. Government impartiality and sustained growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. World Development 83: 54-69.

Agerberg, Mattias. 2017. Failed expectations: Quality of government and support for populist parties in Europe, European Journal of Political Research 56(3): 578-600.

Recommended:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padm.12945

Structural explanations 1: Geography, History, Colonialism, Institutional Persistence and QoG

Hibbs, Douglas and Ola Olsson. 2004. Geography, Biogeography, and Why Some Countries are Rich and Others are Poor, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101(10): 3715-3720.

Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon and James Robinson. 2002. Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of Modern World Income Distribution, Quarterly Journal of
Economics 117(4): 1231-1294.

Becker, Sascha O., Katrin Boeckh, Christa Hainz, and Ludger Woessmann. 2016. The empire is dead, long live the empire! Long‐run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy, The
Economic Journal 126(590): 40-74.

Nunn, Nathan, and Leonard Wantchekon. 2011. The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, American Economic Review 101 (7): 3221-52.

Dell, Melissa. 2010. The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita, Econometrica 78(6): 1863-1903

Recommended:
Sachs, Jeffrey. 2003. Institutions don't rule: direct effects of geography on per capita income, National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working papers series No. w9490.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9490/w9490.pdf

Structural explanations 2: Economic Structure and QoG
Economic structure and QoG

Olander, Petrus. 2019. Diversification, Homogeneity of Interests, and the Impartiality of Government. In Bågenholm, Bauhr, Grimes and Rothstein (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 378-398.

Gawande, By Kishore, Pravin Krishna, and Marcelo Olarreaga. 2012. Lobbying Competition over Trade Policy, International Economic Review 53(1): 115-132.

Resource curse and QoG

Mehlum, Halvor, Karl Moene and Ragnar Torvik. 2006. Institutions and the Resource Curse, Economic Journal 115 (508): 1-20.

Sachs, Jeffrey and Andrew Warner. 2001. The Curse of Natural Resources. European Economic Review 45: 827-838.

Recommended:
Madison, J. 1788. The federalist papers No. 51. https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist-no-51

Venables, Anthony. 2016. Using Natural Resources for Development: Why Has It Proven So11
Difficult? Journal of Economic Perspectives 30(1): 161–184.

Democracy and QoG
Miller, Gary and Thomas Hammond. 1994. Why Politics is More Fundamental than Economics: Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms Are Not Credible, Journal of Theoretical Politics 6 (1): 5-26.

Olson Mancur. 1993. Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development, American Political Science Review* 87(3): 567-576.

Keefer, Philip. 2007. Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies, American Journal of Political Science 51(3): 433-448.

Bauhr, Monika and Marcia Grimes. Democracy and the Quality of Government. In Bågenholm, Bauhr, Grimes and Rothstein (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government. Oxford: OUP, p. 181-208.

Recommended:
Charron, Nicholas and Victor Lapuente. 2010. Does Democracy Produce Quality of Government? European Journal of Political Research 49(4): 443-470.

Falaschetti, Dino and Gary Miller. 2001. Constraining Leviathan: Moral Hazard and Credible Commitment in Constitutional Design, Journal of Theoretical Politics 13(4): 389-411.

Bureaucracy and QoG
Oliveira, E., Abner, G., Lee, S., Suzuki, K., Hur, H., & Perry, J. L. 2023. What does the evidence tell us about merit principles and government performance? Public Administration,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padm.12945

Nistotskaya, Marina and Luciana Cingolani. 2016. Bureaucratic Structure, Regulatory Quality and Entrepreneurship in a Comparative Perspective: Cross-Sectional and Panel Data Evidence,
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 26(3): 519-534

Oliveros, Virginia, and Christian Schuster. 2018. Merit, Tenure, and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic, Comparative Political Studies
51(6): 759–92.

Boräng, Frida, Cornell Agnes, Grimes, Marcia and Christian Schuster. 2018. Cooking the books: Bureaucratic politicization and policy knowledge, Governance 31: 7–26.

Decentralization and QoG
Prud’homme, R. 1995. The Dangers of Decentralization, The World Bank Observer 10(2): 201-20

Fisman, Raymond, and Roberta Gatti. 2002. Decentalization and Corruption: Evidence Across Countries, Journal of Public Economics 83(3): 325-345.12

Faguet, J-P. 2014. Decentralization and Governance, World Development 53:2-13

Smoke, P. 2015. Rethinking Decentralization: Assessing Challenges to a Popular Public Sector Reform, Public Administration and Development* 35:97-112

Kyriacou, Andreas and Oriol Roca-Sagalés. 2011. Fiscal and Political Decentralization and Government Quality, Environment and Planning C 29: 204-223

Oto-Peralias, Daniel, Romero-Avila, Diego and Carlos Usabiaga. 2013. Does Fiscal Decentralization Mitigate the Effects of Corruption on Public Deficits? European Journal of Political Economy 32: 205-231

Recommended:
Oates, W. 1999. An Essay on Fiscal Federalism, Journal of Economic Literature 37(3): 1120-1149.

Faguet J-P. and F. Sanchez. 2008. Decentralization’s Effects on Educational Outcomes in Bolivia and Colombia, World Development 36(7): 1294–1316.

Arends, Helge. 2020. The Dangers of Fiscal Decentralization and Public Service Deliverty: a Review of Arguments, German Political Science Quarterly (Politische Vierteljahresschrift) 61:
599-622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-020-00233-7

Corruption: Theoretical Perspectives
Persson, Anna, Bo Rothstein and Jan Teorell. 2013. Why Anticorruption Reforms Fail: Systemic Corruption as a Collective Action Problem, Governance 26(3): 449-471.

Rothstein, Bo. 2011. Anti-corruption: the indirect ‘big bang’ approach. Review of International Political Economy 18(2): 228-250.

Khan, M., Andreoni, A., & Roy, P. 2019. Anti-coruption in adverse contexts: strategies for improving implementation. SOAS-Anti Corruption Evidence Working paper 13,
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/23495/1/Anti-Corruption%20in%20Adverse%20Contexts%20(1).pdf

Pyman, M. & Heywood, P. (2020). The sector focus and reformulation approach (SFRA). Global Integrity - ACE Working Paper 5. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ca-anticorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Sector-FocusReformulation-Aprroach-_compressed-1.pdf

The World Bank. 2012. Fighting Corruption in Public Services: Chronicling Georgia’s Reforms (available on Canvas)

Recommended:
Prasad, Monica, Mariana Borges and Andre Nickow. 2019. Approaches to Corruption: a Synthesis of the Scholarship, Studies in Comparative International Development 54: 96-132.

Corruption: Empirical Research on Corruption13
Keefer, Philip. 2007. Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies, American Journal of Political Science 51(4): 804-21.

Olken, Benjamin. 2007. Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia, Journal of Political Economy 115 (2): 200-249.

Cameron, Lisa, Ananish Chaudhuri, Nisvan Erkal and Lata Gangadharan. 2009. Propensities to Engage in and Punish Corrupt Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Australia, India, Indonesia
and Singapore, Journal of Public Economics 93(7): 843-851.

Corbacho, Ana, Daniel Gingerich, Virginia Oliveros and Mauricio Ruiz-Vega. 2016. Corruption as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Costa Rica American Journal of Political Science 60(4): 1077-1092

Recommended:
Knutsen, Carl Henrik, Andreas Kotsadam, Eivind Hammersmark Olsen and Tore Wig. 2017. Mining and Local Corruption in Africa, American Journal of Political Science 61(2): 320-334.

Bobonis, Gustavo, Luis R. Cámara Fuertes and Rainer Schwabe. 2016. Monitoring Corruptible Politicians, American Economic Review 106(8): 2371-405.