Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:32:50.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Federal Democracy in the Laboratory: Power Decentralization and Democratic Incentives Against Corruption*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Rodolpho Bernabel Open the ORCID record for Rodolpho Bernabel [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I borrow Roger Myerson’s game-theoretic model on incentives for the success of democracy, adapt the model to an experimental setting, derive testable predictions from it, and test those predictions in the laboratory. Results show that (i) corrupt leaders are replaced more often in federal democracies than in centralized ones; (ii) in the centralized case subjects converged to an equilibrium in which leaders act responsively and are reelected; (iii) honest presidents are reelected at the same rate in both institutional designs, and (iv) the president acted less responsively in the decentralized case. I also run robustness checks and test for the effect of the language used in the experiment. The data show that the results are robust with regards to experimental choices.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Rodolpho Bernabel, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, New York University, 19 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012 ([email protected]). This study was presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference, the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, the University of Texas Graduate Conference in Public Law, and graduate student workshops at New York University and Yale University, where the author received valuable feedback. The author would like to thank Rebecca Morton, Sanford Gordon, Christopher Dawes, Tiberiu Dragu, Eric Dickson, Gregory Huber, Dominik Duell, Kai Ou, the editor, and two anonymous readers for their invaluable help, comments, and suggestions. All remaining errors are the author’s own responsibility. The author also greatly appreciate the funding provided by the Center for Experimental Social Science at New York University. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2016.17

References

Banks, Jeffrey, and Sundaram, Rangarajan. 1998. ‘Optimal Retention in Agency Problems’. Journal of Economic Theory 82:293–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Robert. 1973. ‘The Control of Politicians: An Economic Model’. Public Choice 14:19–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2008. ‘Ethnic Invention: A New Principle for Institutional Design in Ethnically Divided Democracies’. In Margaret Levi, James Johnson, Jack Knight and Susan Stokes (eds), Designing Democratic Government – Making Institutions Work, 86–116. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Cheibub, José. 2007. Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chowdhury, Shyamal. 2004. ‘The Effect of Democracy and Press Freedom on Corruption: And Empirical Test’. Economic Letters 85:93–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferejohn, John. 1986. ‘Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control’. Public Choice 50:5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, Urs. 2007. ‘z-Tree: Zurich Toolbox for Ready-Made Economic Experiments’. Experimental Economics 10(2):171–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freille, Sebastian, and Haque, Mohammad. 2007. ‘Federalism, Decentralization and Corruption’. Working Paper, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, paper number 27535. Available at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27535/.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, Sean. 2014. ‘Accountability and Principal-Agent Models’. In Mark Bovens, Robert Goodin and Thomas Schillemans (eds), Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability, 90–106. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hafer, Catherine, and Landa, Dimitri. 2007. ‘Public Goods in Federal Systems’. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 2:253–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linz, Juan. 1990. ‘The Perils of Presidentialism’. Journal of Democracy 1(1):51–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshfield, Jonathan. 2011. ‘Federalism and Political Competition in Emerging Democracies’. Washington University Global Studies Law Review 10(2):297–346.Google Scholar
Morton, Rebecca, and Williams, Kenneth. 2010. Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myerson, Roger. 2006. ‘Federalism and Incentives for Success of Democracy’. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1:3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myerson, Roger. 2011. ‘Toward a Theory of Leadership and State Building’. PNAS 108(4):21297–21301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Offe, Claus. 2006. ‘Political Institutions and Social Power – Conceptual Explorations’. In Skowronek Stephen Shapiro, Ian and Daniel Galvin (eds), Rethinking Political Institutions – The Art of the State , chapter 1 9–31. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael, Cheibub, Jose, and Limongi, Fernando. 2000. Democracy and Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seabright, Paul. 1996. ‘Accountability and Decentralization in Government: An Incomplete Contracts Model’. European Economic Review 40:61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serra, Daniela. 2006. ‘Empirical Determinants of Corruption: A Sensitivity Analysis’. Public Choice 126:225–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, Milan. 2013. ‘Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy’. American Journal of Political Science 57(3):685–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transparency International. 2014. ‘Corruption Perceptions Index 2014’. Technical report, Transparency International. Available at http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014.Google Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2000. ‘The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study’. Journal of Public Economics 76:399–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Cities and Local Governments. 2007. ‘Local Governments in the World – Basic Facts on 82 Selected Countries’. Technical report, Dexia, Berlin. Available at http://www.cities-localgovernments.org/gold/upload/, accessed 13 November 2014.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R. 1997. ‘The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law’. American Political Science Review 91(2):245–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Bernabel supplementary material

Appendix

Download Bernabel supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 85.4 KB
Supplementary material: File

Bernabel supplementary material

Bernabel supplementary material 1

Download Bernabel supplementary material(File)
File 11.2 KB