Hanna Bäck
Professor
Cabinets, Prime Ministers and Corruption. A Comparative Analysis of Parliamentary Governments in Post-war Europe
Author
Summary, in English
Why are some states more corrupt than others? Drawing on the literature on governance in parliamentary democracies, we suggest that the degree of corruption depends on the ability of key political actors to control ministers who have been delegated power. We argue that the Prime Minister has incentives to limit corruption within the cabinet and has the ability to do so when there are certain “control mechanisms” at hand. One such mechanism is the PM’s ability to fire or demote ministers who are not behaving in accordance with his or her wishes. We hypothesize that governmental corruption will be lower in systems where the constitution grants the PM strong powers. Using a new dataset (Varieties of Democracy), which provides more specific measures on high-level corruption across a longer time period, we analyze corruption in 26 West and East European democracies over the post-war period and find support for our hypothesis.
Department/s
- Department of Political Science
Publishing year
2019
Language
English
Pages
149-170
Publication/Series
Political Studies
Volume
67
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Topic
- Political Science
Keywords
- coalition governments
- government corruption
- Prime Ministers
- principal–agent theory
- parliamentary systems
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0032-3217