Browsing by Author "Bauhr, Monika"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 20

Building Quality of Government? International Organizations and Educational Performance in Africa
(2014-11) Bauhr, Monika; Charron, Nicholas; QoG Institute
Although international organizations are often seen as an important transformative power on the international arena, we know less about how and when they promote better domestic institutions. Using data on education outcomes in 53 African countries from 1994-2008, we show that IOs use several empirically distinct channels through which they influence domestic outcomes: conditionality, rankings and international integration. We find that integration and high international rankings have a positive impact on education outputs, while IOs have a negative influence when they use conditional aid. Our findings have implications both for the diffusion of the quality of government agenda, and for advancing our knowledge of IO power.
Corruption in the Carbon Market? International Organisations, Transparency and the Clash of Values
(2009-06) Bauhr, Monika; QoG Institute
Are international organizations a positive force in improving good governance and reducing corruption? International organizations have traditionally been perceived as a positive force in international politics. This paper suggests that the effect of interaction with international organizations on quality of government (QoG) norms may depend on the type of system international organizations promote. In a study on the role of international organizations as constructers, supervisors and catalysers of the carbon market through the clean development mechanism (CDM), the paper shows that there are at least three major explanations why international organizations may promote bad rather than good government norms: leadership explanations, market logic explanation and informational explanations. The paper thereby shows the benefits of moving beyond descriptions of system level features, such as inbuilt transparency mechanisms, to also study the effect that systems have on participants involved. The analysis has implications for our understanding of the influence of international organizations in an area often ignored by good governance scholars: how and in what way international organizations influence quality of government through their important and growing role in the implementation of international environmental agreements.
Does Corruption Cause Aid Fatigue?
(2011-12) Bauhr, Monika; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; QoG Institute
Does corruption reduce support for foreign aid? General explanations for aid fatigue, such as meagre development results and the perception that taxpayers’ money is being wasted fail to solve what we call the aid-corruption paradox, namely that the need for foreign aid is often the greatest in corrupt environments. Corruption can be seen as an external impediment on the effectiveness of aid, but also as an internal and important target of aid-driven efforts to improve governments. This paper explores the influence of corruption on support for foreign aid and conditions under which corruption causes aid fatigue. Building on studies of the motives for foreign aid and the social acceptability of corruption, we suggest that the relationship between corruption and aid fatigue substantially depends on fundamental beliefs about the role of foreign aid. The analysis builds on data from the 2009 Eurobarometer survey. Our findings have implications for understanding the consequences of the remarkable increase in exposure of corruption in recent years, efforts to tackle global environmental challenges, and fundamental relationships between corruption and aid legitimacy.
Electoral Clientelism and Redistribution: How Vote Buying Undermines Citizen Demand for Public Services
(2023-09) Bauhr, Monika; Justesen, Mogens K.; The Quality of Government Institute
Does electoral clientelism limit public demand for programmatic redistribution? While recent studies suggest that distribution of pre-electoral clientelist transfers can divert resources from post-electoral programmatic redistribution, fewer studies have investigated how citizens’ experiences of clientelism shape demand for programmatic redistribution. We suggest that electoral clientelism undermines citizens demand for programmatic redistribution, since it establishes norms of reciprocity, signals commitment to particularistic payoffs, and may alienate people who would otherwise be supportive of redistribution. Using a nationwide survey fielded in South Africa following the 2016 municipal elections, we show that citizens’ who experience electoral clientelism express lower demand for government redistribution related to health, education, unemployment, pensions, and social grants. We also find that support for redistribution decreases most among citizens with high levels of political trust and who believe the political system is relatively uncorrupt. This suggests that electoral clientelism reinforces demand for particularistic as opposed to programmatic redistribution.
Our Common Climate. How Consensual Expert Ideas Shape Global Public Opinion
(2005) Bauhr, Monika
Perceptions of Corruption in Sweden
(2010-04) Bauhr, Monika; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; Oscarsson, Henrik; Persson, Anna; QoG Institute
Public Perceptions of Corruption: The Prevalence and Moral Rejection of Corruption in Sweden
(2011-10) Bauhr, Monika; Oscarsson, Henrik; QoG Institute
This paper analyses citizens´ perception of corruption in Sweden along two dimensions: a) the spread of corruption among public officials, politicians, and businessmen, and b) the degree of acceptance for corrupt behaviors that violate the norm of impartiality, or in any other way represent the exercise of power in the grey zone between legal and directly illegal behavior. Building on a national representative sample from 2010, we show differences in perceptions of the occurrence and acceptance of corruption in different sectors, among different segments of the Swedish population, and for different types of corrupt behavior. Our results show differences between the private and public sector. Businessmen are perceived as more corrupt than public sector employees, which, in their turn, are perceived more corrupt than politicians. Similarly, Swedes believe that it is somewhat more acceptable for a private actor with public power to breach the norm of impartiality, the example being a private doctor letting a friend or close relative advance in the health care queue in comparison to a public sector doctor. We also show that there are differences in the tolerance towards different types of corruption in Swedish society, and that there are regional variations in the acceptance of corruption. In particular, younger persons and citizens of the city of Gothenburg show a somewhat more acceptable attitude towards corruption. The findings have implications for understanding the scope and effects of new public management reforms. They also have implications for understanding the effects of an increased exposure of corruption, and how exposure may gradually shift norms in society and make corruption more acceptable.
Seeing the State: The Implications of Transparency for Societal Accountability
(2010-06) Bauhr, Monika; Grimes, Marcia; Harring, Niklas; QoG Institute
International organizations and NGOs promote transparency as a necessary condition for enhancing accountability and curbing corruption. Transparency is predicted to deter corruption in part by increasing the opportunities for inter-institutional oversight and formal accountability, but also by expanding the possibilities for societal accountability, i.e. for citizens to monitor, scrutinize and hold public office holders accountable. While the societal accountability mechanism linking transparency and good government is often implied, it contains a number of assumptions seldom examined empirically. This study theoretically unpacks and explores empirically how transparency may influence good government via the mechanism of societal accountability, that is, by inciting reactions and responses from citizens. Using data compiled by the Quality of Government Institute, we show that increased transparency prompts different public reactions in countries with comparatively higher levels of corruption than in low corrupt countries. The data indicate that in corrupt countries, transparency, counter to many predictions, erodes political trust but stimulates civic engagement. The findings suggest that transparency may incite discontent and civic mobilization in the short term, contributing to greater accountability and better government in the long term.
Sub-national Quality of Government in EU Member States: Presenting the 2021 European Quality of Government Index and its relationship with Covid-19 indicators
(2021-04) Charron, Nicholas; Lapuente, Victor; Bauhr, Monika; The Quality of Government institute
The 2021 European Quality of Government Index (the EQI) is the largest survey ever undertaken to meas-ure perceptions of quality of government, collecting the opinions of over 129,000 respondents in a total of 208 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions in all EU 27 member states. This paper highlights some of its main results and compares the results with previous rounds of the survey. The survey is not only unique in size, it is also allows for new insights into the intricate link between government institutions, health policy and crisis man-agement, since it has been conducted in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a time of important chal-lenges, we find an overall increase in the perceived quality of government of European regions. However, the geography of QoG is slowly shifting, with many regions in Eastern Europe now surpassing regions in Southern Europe. We also see a drop in most regions in Poland and Hungary, whose response to the pan-demic has involved important infringement of democratic rights and institutions. Such drops cause concern for future crises management and beyond. We find that regional level corruption is closely linked to the extent to which citizens’ worry about the effects of the pandemic.
Sub-national Quality of Government in EU Member States: Presenting the 2021 European Quality of Government Index and its relationship with Covid-19 indicators
(2021-04) Charron, Nicholas; Lapuente, Victor; Bauhr, Monika; QoG The Quality of Government Institute
The 2021 European Quality of Government Index (the EQI) is the largest survey ever undertaken to measure perceptions of quality of government, collecting the opinions of over 129,000 respondents in a total of 208 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions in all EU 27 member states. This paper highlights some of its main results and compares the results with previous rounds of the survey. The survey is not only unique in size, it is also allows for new insights into the intricate link between government institutions, health policy and crisis management, since it has been conducted in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a time of important challenges, we find an overall increase in the perceived quality of government of European regions. However, the geography of QoG is slowly shifting, with many regions in Eastern Europe now surpassing regions in Southern Europe. We also see a drop in most regions in Poland and Hungary, whose response to the pandemic has involved important infringement of democratic rights and institutions. Such drops cause concern for future crises management and beyond. We find that regional level corruption is closely linked to the extent to which citizens’ worry about the effects of the pandemic.
The Geography of Quality of Government in Europe. Subnational variations in the 2024 European Quality of Government Index and Comparisons with Previous Rounds
(2024-02) Charron, Nicholas; Lapuente, Victor; Bauhr, Monika; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
The 2024 European Quality of Government Index (EQI) collects the opinions of 135,227 respondents in a total of 210 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions in all EU 27 member state countries. This paper, first, presents the 2024 data and highlights some of the main results of this effort to understand citizens’ perceptions, and personal experiences, of regional quality of government. Second, it compares the findings with the previous four rounds of the survey (starting in 2010), highlighting both the regions that are improving and those that show a declining trend in their quality of government. Third, the paper discusses the changes made to round 5 and other trends in the data over time, paying special attention to the comparison of EU citizens’ perceptions and experiences of government before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Compared to the improvements in corruption levels recorded in the 2021 study, we find that corruption levels have bounced back to more normal levels in post pandemic Europe.
Towards Better Governments? A Theoretical Framework for the Influence of International Organizations
(2009-12) Bauhr, Monika; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; QoG Institute
Although international organizations are typically seen as important actors promoting better government institutions and reducing corruption, there are few comprehensive analysis of how they promote such changes. This paper develops a theoretical framework that traces the roots of IO success or failure to factors that are internal to the strategies that they employ. We suggest that the tools used by international organizations to promote quality of government can be categorized into four groups: Inter-state competitive pressures; conditions on economic assistance; interaction with transnational actors; and the enlargement of international communities. In contrast to accounts that trace the roots of IO success or failure in member states to domestic particularities, such as the amount of domestic resistance to government reforms, we argue that the mechanisms themselves have a number of shortcomings that reduce their effectiveness. Six such factors are identified: imprecise data, market pressures, contested policy advice, incomplete internalization and lack of mainstreaming of norms by international organizations and member states, and low priority of quality of government issues. The paper thereby offers an explanation for why numerous empirical studies fail to find a positive correlation between IO measures and better government institutions.
Transparency and Its Discontents: How IO Transparency Influences Domestic Resistance to Government Reforms
(2010-06) Bauhr, Monika; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; QoG Institute
How do international organizations influence domestic transparency? Studies typically contend that in order to be instrumental in promoting good government institutions, international organizations have to embody these norms in their own work. International organizations (IOs) have recently implemented a number of reforms to open up certain official documents and proceedings to public access. These reforms are generally expected to promote support for transparency in member countries. We suggest that one important and overlooked condition determines the ability of international organizations to meet these expectations: the quality of IO decision making, defined as its effectiveness, predictability and fairness. The paper develops these ideas theoretically and presents a study on how these reforms influence perceptions of the merits and drawbacks of transparency among senior government officials in environmental ministries, involved in projects seeking finance through the Clean Development Mechanisms and the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol.
Transparency and the Quality of Local Public Service Provision: Street-Level Discretion in Education, Health and Infrastructure.
(2019-05) Bauhr, Monika; Carlitz, Ruth; QoG Institute
Transparency has been widely promoted as a tool for improving public service delivery; however, empirical evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that the effects of transparency on service provision are contingent on the nature of the service. Specif- ically, transparency is more likely to improve the quality of service provision when street-level discretion is high, since discretion increases information asymmetries, and, in the absence of transparency, allows officials to target public services in suboptimal ways. Using finely grained data from the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index between 2011–2017, we show that communes that experience increases in transparency also experience improved quality of education and health (services characterized by greater discretion), while the quality of infrastructure provision (characterized by less discretion) bears no relation to increased transparency. The findings help us understand when transparency can improve service provision, as well the effects of transparency reforms in non-democratic settings.
Turning a Blind Eye? The Impact of Corruption on Aid Fatigue
(2014-11) Bauhr, Monika; QoG Institute
Why do donors continue to send foreign aid to corrupt countries, despite that corruption is increasingly seen as detrimental to economic and environmental development? This study unpacks the complex relationship between corruption and aid fatigue and suggests that while corruption reduces support for foreign aid, reactions to corruption in aid depend on both the circumstances under which corruption occurs and prospects for accountability. Building on scenario-based experiments, the results show that the end results of aid, the scale and the perceived social normality of corruption influences the effect of corruption on aid fatigue. They also show that corruption generates specific aid fatigue (directed towards individual projects or actors) rather than support for generalized (across-the-board cuts) in aid levels. This contributes towards explaining why previous studies have failed to find a link between corruption and aid fatigue and how citizens deal with the ”aid-corruption paradox”, i.e. that the need for foreign aid is often the greatest in corrupt environments.
What Do Citizens Think About Redistribution and Aid Within the EU? Description and Highlights of a Pan-European Citizen Survey on Public Support for Cohesion Policy
(2018-02) Charron, Nicholas; Bauhr, Monika; QoG Institute
This paper introduces the main findings and methodology of a new large-scale pan European survey capturing citizens’ support for EUs efforts to reduce inequality between richer and poorer regions in Europe, cohesion policy. Despite that cohesion policy currently constitutes the 2nd larges budget item of the European Union, we know surprisingly little on about the level of public support for such redistribution. This major data collection effort was aimed at enhancing our understanding of citizen knowledge, attitudes and experience with Cohesion policy, along with potential determinants – both original to the project and others drawn from the literature – that are associated with support (or lack thereof) for the policy. In all, 17,147 interviews were carried out in 15 EU member states, which represent 85% of the total EU28 population. The results contribute towards a better understanding of some of the factors that may ultimately determine the level of redistribution and inequality in Europe, such as identification with Europe, utilitarian (self-interest) factors, political party support, and perceptions of the quality of government and corruption at regional, country, and EU level.
What is Government Transparency? New Measures and Relevance for Quality of Government
(2012-12) Bauhr, Monika; Grimes, Marcia; QoG Institute
As policymakers and researchers focus increasing attention on the importance of government transparency for accountability and good governance more generally, the demand for greater conceptual clarity and authoritative measures of government transparency increases. Transparency advocates maintain that greater access to government information is the sine qua non of greater accountability and better quality of government in the long term. As a concept, transparency is, similar to rule of law or democracy, difficult to capture with single empirical indicators. This paper introduces a set of measures that we argue together capture key components of government transparency: government openness, whistleblower protection and likelihood of exposure (or publicity). The transparency data, collected through an expert survey carried out by the Quality of Government Institute, currently cover 52 countries with additional countries to be added in subsequent surveys. This paper explores these new measures in an effort to determine their validity and robustness.
Who gains access to public services? Social Bargaining, Corruption and Street-level Service Provision
(2023-02) Bauhr, Monika; Carlitz, Ruth; Kovacikova, Lucia; The Quality of Government Institute
Despite massive global investments in public services, sizeable discrepancies remain in terms of people’s needs being met once they are in contact with service providers — what we term effective access. This study investigates the sources of such discrepancies and highlights the importance of social bargaining — where citizen leverage their connections with street-level service providers. Survey data from 34 African countries shows citizens with greater social bargaining capacity enjoy greater effective access to public services, in contrast to citizens that have to resort to paying bribes. We further demonstrate the importance of social bargaining using unique learning assessment data from 70,000 households in Tanzania. Parents with greater social bargaining capacity are more likely to be given opportunities to interact with school officials and are also more likely to take advantage of those opportunities. Moreover, the children of such parents are signif-icantly more likely to achieve relevant and effective learning outcomes.
Why Pay Bribes? Collective Action and Anticorruption Efforts
(2011-12) Bauhr, Monika; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; QoG Institute
This paper suggests that the effectiveness of current anticorruption policy suffers from a focus on the scale of the corruption problem instead of type of corruption that is to be fought. I make a distinction between need and greed corruption. Contrary to the most commonly used distinctions this distinction focuses on the basic motivation for paying a bribe, and whether the bribe is used to gain services that citizens are legally entitled to or not. Greed corruption is used to gain advantages that citizens are not legally entitled to, build on collusion rather than extortion and can thereby remain invisible and unobtrusive. In greed corruption societies the costs of corruption are divided between a large number of actors and the negative effects of corruption on economic and democratic performance are delayed and diffuse. I subsequently use this distinction to develop three propositions about the relationship between corruption and institutional trust, and the effects of anticorruption policy. Using both cross country data and a case study of a low corruption context, I suggests a) That greed corruption can coexist with high institutional trust, and that it thereby may not follow the expected, and often confirmed, negative relationship between corruption and institutional trust b) That greed corruption may not produce civic engagement against corruption and c) That increased transparency may not produce the expected benefits in low need corruption contexts, since it can disproportionally alter expectations about the entrenchment of corruption in a society. In other words, the paper suggest that the balance between need and greed corruption in a society determines the effectiveness of traditional policy measures derived from the logic of principal agent theory, such as societal accountability and transparency, and that the relevance of collective action theory to understand the effects of anticorruption efforts can be extended to contexts where the overall level of corruption is low.
Why Support International redistribution? Corruption and Public Support for Aid in the Eurozone
(2018-05) Bauhr, Monika; Charron, Nicholas; QoG Institute
What factors explain public support for international redistribution? While the European Union has sent billions of taxpayers’ money to over indebted euro countries in an attempt to avoid an economic collapse, these transfers have encountered fierce resistance among both donor and recipient constituents. However, we know surprisingly little about why citizens support or oppose redistribution within the EU. This paper suggests that domestic levels of corruption and institutional quality may be one of the most important explanations for the great variation in public support for financial assistance and aid. Using recent European Elections Survey data merged with data on regional level quality of government, we show that the effects of institutional quality are consistently stronger than macro-economic factors, including economic development, inequality or levels of public debt. We find strong evidence that citizens’ in low corrupt contexts are more likely to support financial assistance to fellow member states. The results have implications for future challenges in securing public support for EU economic integration as well as for our understanding of how and why corruption undermines society’s collective action capacity.