Most comparative studies on corruption are geared towards the analysis of factors dealing with the selection and the incentives of actors taking policy decisions in a state. With few exceptions, such as Rauch & Evans (2000), ...

In this paper we purport to test the proposition that elections have a democratizing effect, drawing on cross-sectional time-series data at best covering a global sample of 193 countries from 1919 to 2004. Two versions of ...

Scholars have emphasized the importance of having a “Weberian bureaucracy” for the socio-economic development of a country, but few attempts have been made to measure public administrations according to their degree of ...

Why have different industrialized capitalist market economies developed such varying systems for social protection and social insurance? The hitherto most successful theory for explaining this is the Power Resource Theory ...

In this paper we test the often asserted view that the prospects for democratization differ among different types of authoritarian regimes. To what extent do exogenous shocks— economic crisis, popular protest and democratic ...

With an increased awareness of the detrimental effects of corruption on development, strategies to fight it are now a top priority in policy circles around the world. Since Africa is home to most of the thoroughly corrupt ...

Social scientists face the challenge of determining whether their data are valid, yet they lack prac- tical guidance about how to do so. Existing publications on data validation provide mostly abstract information for ...

Theory predicts democracy should reduce corruption. Yet, numerous scholars have found empirically that corruption decreases at high levels of democracy but actually increases at low levels. A key weaknesses of studies ...

The predominant view of corruption within political science and economics today is the principal-agent model. Corruption is modeled as criminal behavior on behalf of some agents entrusted to act on the behalf of some ...

For policymakers, activists, academics, and citizens around the world the conceptualization and measurement of democracy matters. The needs of democracy promoters and social scientists are convergent. We all need better ...