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Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments (2008)
| Citations: | 72 - 3 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Ferraz08electoralaccountability,
author = {Claudio Ferraz and Frederico Finan},
title = {Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments },
year = {2008}
}
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Abstract
Political corruption is a concern of many modern democracies. It weakens democratic institutions, restricts public services, and lowers productivity undermining economic development. Yet despite its importance, we know little about its causes. We construct new measures of political corruption in local governments using audit reports from an anti-corruption program in Brazil. We apply these objective measures of corruption to test whether the possibility of reelection affects the level of rents extracted by incumbent politicians. Our analysis confirms that there is significantly less corruption in municipalities where mayors can get re-elected. Mayors with re-election incentives misappropriate 27 percent less resources than mayors without re-election incentives. We also present evidence that these effects are more pronounced among municipalities with less access to information and where the likelihood of judicial punishment is lower. Overall these findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician’s corrupt behavior.
Keyphrases
local government electoral accountability political corruption re-election incentive many modern democracy crucial role incumbent politician political accountability new measure economic development audit report democratic institution politician corrupt behavior electoral rule objective measure anti-corruption program judicial punishment public service
