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The Role of Accountability in the Relationship between Democracy and Corruption

  • Democracy is discussed in the comparative empirical literature as an important determinant of corruption. Several studies show that not only are democracies less corrupt than authoritarian regimes, but also that there is great variation in corruption levels across democratic regimes. This dissertation is concerned with examining the reasons behind this pattern. It begins by arguing that the study of democracy’s impact on corruption requires a stronger focus on the causal mechanisms linking these two phenomena. Based on a review of causal arguments raised in the literature, a discussion of different dimensions of accountability–electoral, social and horizontal–is introduced as a useful framework for this purpose. This sets the ground for the two main empirical contributions of the dissertation. In both cases, the study relies on original corruption data collected from over 600 audit reports on municipalities randomly selected through a federal audit program implemented in Brazil. First, a panel data set with 130 municipalities that have faced multiple audits between 2003 and 2013 is used to examine whether those three dimensions of accountability exert a deterrent effect on corruption over time. Second, a cross-section of 383 municipalities is the basis for analyzing the factors explaining when accountability effectively occurs, focusing on conditioning factors of electoral accountability against corrupt politicians.(...)

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Metadaten
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Language:English
Author(s):Bianca Vaz Mondo
Hertie Collections (Serial Number):Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School (04/2017)
Publication year:2017
Embargo Date:2018/06/08
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Granting Institution:Hertie School
Thesis date:2017/09/08
Number pages:235
DOI:https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-2377
Release Date:2018/02/09
Notes:
Shelf mark: 2019D010 + 2019D010+1
Hertie School Research:Publications PhD Researchers
Licence of document (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - 4.0 International
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