Department of Political Science / Statsvetenskapliga institutionen

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The personal and the political : how personal welfare state experiences affect political trust and ideology
(2002) Kumlin, Staffan
Citizens in advanced industrial democracies frequently have personal experiences with public services and welfare state arrangements. They may have regular contact with public health care services, schools, public transportation, public libraries, and many other types of services. And at one life stage or another they may receive parts of their incomes in the form of pensions, student aid, unemployment insurance, and so on. This study investigates the extent to which personal welfare state expenences affect general political orientations. What are the political effects when a person is discontent with some aspect of, say, the particular health services or the public kindergartens that she has been in personal contact with? Does she lose faith in the weifare state or in leftist ideas about large-scale state intervention in society? Does she take her negative experiences as a sign that the political system and its politicians are not functioning satisfactorily? Will her inclination to support the goveming party drop? Addressing these and other questions, this study develops a theoretical framework that incorporates insights from a muititude of research traditions, including research on voting behaviour, social psychology, rational choice theory, political psychology, and institutional theory. The framework is tested empirically using Swedish primary survey data collected under the auspices of the 1999 West Sweden SOM Survey, and the 1999 Swedish European Parliament Election Study. The results indicate that personal welfare state experiences have substantively significant effects on political orientations. This is a somewhat different conclusion than the one found in much previous research - especially the "economic voting" literature. By and large, this research has reinforced the notion that the personal is separate from the political, in that it has usually found relatively weak statistical relationships between, on the one hand, political attitudes and behaviour, and personal economic hardship and personal unemployment on the other. Rather, the economic voting literature emphasises the political importance of mass media-driven "sociotropic perceptions" of societal events and trends, rather than personal experiences of events and trends. Furthermore, personal welfare state experiences are not uni-dimensional events. Rather, the perspectives of self-interest, distributive justice, and voice oppominities all appear to capture different aspects of these experiences that are consequential for political orientations. Specifically, self-interest is idiuential mainly for political ideology, with those who gain personally from the weifare state being more likely to support state intervention and more likely to stand further to the left. In contrast, experienced distributive justice and experienced voice opportunities have an impact mainly on political trust, where those who have personally experienced injustice are less likely than others to be satisfied with the democratic system and to trust politicians. Finally, the effects of personal welfare state experiences appear systematically structured by "the institutional interface." Customer institutions - where discretion is rare and exit-options frequent - are better at generating positive experiences, and in turn positive effects on welfare state support and political trust, than client institutions - where discretion is frequent and exit-options rare.
Öppenhet och korruption
(2005) Lindstedt, Catharina; QoG Institute
Det här är en kortversion av den ursprungliga uppsatsen. För ett mer utvecklat teoretiskt resonemang samt mer utförliga resultatredovisningar hänvisas läsaren till den ursprungliga uppsatsen Betydelsen av öppenhet för att förklara graden av korruption. Varför öppenhet inte skall ses som någon fundamental förklaring till länders korruptionsgrad. Institutioner, organisationer och forskare talar om att det är mycket betydelsefullt med öppenhet för att vi skall kunna reducera korruptionsgraden i länder. Problemet med de uttalandena är att de bygger på generella antaganden och inte på några egentliga undersökningar. Det innebär att vi egentligen inte kan uttala oss om det finns ett samband mellan öppenhet och korruption och än mindre om vikten av öppenhet. Studien är uppdelad i tre delar. Den första skall försöka besvara om öppenhet i sig kan förklara graden av korruption och om så är fallet skall del två försöka förklara hur viktigt det är med öppenhet för att kunna förklara och reducera graden av korruption jämfört med de faktorer som i dag ses som viktiga. Del tre är sedan inkluderat i studien för att få mer nyanserade svar. Studien är utformad utifrån en statistisk design med syfte att studera de 109 länder som det funnits fakta om. Materialet bygger på aggregerade data som sammanställs till index och analyseras genom bivariat och multivariat regressionsanalys. Studiens huvudsakliga resultat visar på att det finns ett samband mellan öppenhet och korruption och att öppenhet är av betydelse. Resultaten visar dock på komplexiteten med att förklara korruption i och med att vissa resultat i den nyanserade delen påvisar att öppenhet behöver en ytterligare faktor för att förklara och reducera graden av korruption.
What is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Political Institutions
(2005) Rothstein, Bo; Teorell, Jan; QoG Institute
The last years have seen a growth in research on “good governance” and the quality of government institutions. This development has been propelled by empirical findings that such institutions might hold the key to understanding economic growth in developing countries. We argue that a key issue has not been addressed, namely the question of what “good governance”—or the quality of government —actually means at the conceptual level. Economists’ definitions are either extremely broad or suffer from a functionalist slant that weakens their applicability. We argue that a more coherent and specific definition of quality of government is necessary to attain, and propose one such definition, namely the impartiality of government institutions that implement government policies. The argument is based on the idea that a democratic system has two sides that are guided by opposite norms: partisanship for the representational process and impartiality for the process of implementation.
Exploring a Causal Relationship between Vertical and Horizontal Trust
(2005) Eek, Daniel; Rothstein, Bo; QoG Institute
Three experiments investigating how a possible causal relationship works between vertical trust (i.e., trust in authorities) and horizontal trust (i.e., trust in others) are reported. In Experiment 1, 40 undergraduate students read and responded to several scenarios describing fictitious events in a foreign society. Based on their effects on trust, the scenarios were hypothesized to be grouped into the following four categories; positive effects on vertical trust, negative effects on vertical trust, positive effects on horizontal trust, and negative effects on horizontal trust. In different participant groups, subsequent to each scenario, participants’ levels of vertical or horizontal trust were assessed. As hypothesized, different scenarios had reliable effects on the two forms of trust. In Experiment 2, 64 undergraduates read the most effective scenarios from Experiment 1 and responded to how participants’ levels of vertical and horizontal trust were affected by the scenarios. Results supported the hypothesized causal relationship from vertical to horizontal trust when trust levels were decreased, but not when trust levels were increased. Results of Experiment 3, where another 48 undergraduates participated, verified that the strength of the causal effect of vertical trust on horizontal trust depends on whether trust is increased or decreased. In conclusion, the results from the three experiments indicate that increased vertical trust has positive effects on horizontal trust, decreased vertical trust has smaller negative effects on horizontal trust, and horizontal trust has no effects on vertical trust.
Political Corruption and Social Trust: An Experimental Approach
(2005) Eek, Daniel; Rothstein, Bo; QoG Institute
Few experimental studies have investigated important factors for people’s perceptions of the trustworthiness of others. Building on theories that point at the importance of trustworthy government institutions, an experiment was conducted to examine factors of importance for people’s propensity to relate trust in authorities to trust in others. A group of 64 undergraduate students responded to a number of scenarios in which they observed another person’s efforts to try to receive immediate assistance from an authority. Descriptions of the other person’s encounter with the authority varied within groups in terms of whether or not a bribe was used in order to receive immediate assistance, whether the other person or the authority was the initiator, and outcome in terms of whether immediate assistance was approved or declined. Type of authority was a between-groups factor. Subsequent to each scenario, participants’ levels of various aspects of vertical and horizontal trust were measured. As hypothesized, the results showed strong effects of bribe, initiator, and outcome on all dependent measures. Bribe, initiator, and approved assistance decreased both vertical and horizontal trust. The results give support for the idea that trust in an authority influences the perceptions of the trustworthiness of others in general.
Transparency and Corruption: The Conditional Significance of a Free Press
(2005) Lindstedt, Catharina; Naurin, Daniel; QoG Institute
Is making political institutions more transparent an effective method for combating corruption? Common wisdom in the debate and research on the causes of corruption answers strongly in the affirmative. We argue that this optimistic view is both right and wrong. Transparency may be an important medicine against corruption, but only under certain conditions. In order to capture this conditionality the concept of transparency must be distinguished from the interrelated but qualitatively different concepts of publicity and accountability. Facing increased risks of having information about ones bad behaviour made publicly available (transparency) is not enough to affect elite actors’ behaviour, if the information is not likely to be broadly spread, processed and utilised as a ground for putting sanctions on these actors. The theoretical argument is tested in the paper by analyzing the interaction effects between the degree of freedom of the press (as indicia of transparency), free and fair elections (indicating the presence of an accountability mechanism) and the level of education (a condition for publicity) in a cross-country study of 107 countries. The results demonstrate that the failure of previous research to analyze interaction effects have led scholars to draw inadequate and misleading conclusions about the link between transparency, democracy and corruption. Furthermore, it is argued, these findings will help to solve a puzzle in the previous research on democracy and corruption. Taken one at a time transparency and free and fair elections will not help much to reduce corruption. Taken together, on the other hand, they can be a powerful team.
Understanding Environmental Performance of States: An Institution-centered Approach and Some Difficulties
(2005) Duit, Andreas; QoG Institute
Hur kan korruption bekämpas? Om olika metoders effektivitet att angripa korruption
(2005) Berg, Ulrika; QoG Institute
All for All: Equality, Corruption and Social Trust
(2006) Rothstein, Bo; Uslaner, Eric M.; QoG Institute
The importance of social trust has become widely accepted in the social sciences. A number of explanations have been put forward for the stark variation in social trust among countries. Among these, participation in voluntary associations received most attention. Yet, there is scant evidence that participation can lead to trust. In this paper, we shall examine a variable that has not gotten the attention we think it deserves in the discussion about the sources of generalized trust, namely equality. We conceptualize equality in two dimensions: One is economic equality and the other is equality of opportunity. The omission of both these dimensions of equality in the social capital literature is peculiar for several reasons. One is that it is obvious that the countries that score highest on social trust also rank highest on economic equality, namely the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Canada. Secondly, these are countries have put a lot of effort in creating equality of opportunity, not least in regard to their policies for public education, health care, labor market opportunities and (more recently) gender equality. The argument for increasing social trust by reducing inequality has largely been ignored in the policy debates about social trust. Social capital research has to a large extent been used by several governments and policy organizations to send a message to people that the bad things in their society is caused by too little volunteering. The policy implications that follows from our research is that the low levels of trust and social capital that plague many countries are caused by too little government action to reduce inequality. However, many countries with low levels of social trust and social capital may be stuck in what is known as a social trap. The logic of such a situation is the following. Social trust will not increase because massive social inequality prevails, but the public policies that could remedy this situation can not be established precisely because there is a genuine lack of trust. This lack of trust concerns both “other people” and the government institutions that are needed to implement universal policies.
Does Type of Authoritarianism Affect the Prospects for Democracy? Exogenous Shocks and Contingent Democratization
(2006) Teorell, Jan; Hadenius, Axel; QoG Institute
In this paper we test the often asserted view that the prospects for democratization differ among different types of authoritarian regimes. To what extent do exogenous shocks— economic crisis, popular protest and democratic diffusion—impact on democratization differently among monarchies, one-party, military, and limited multi-party regimes? Drawing on cross-sectional time-series evidence from a global sample of countries in 1972-2002, we find that in particular limited multiparty, and to some extent military regimes, are more likely than one-party regimes to democratize in response to popular protest and economic performance.
Political Corruption and Social Trust: An Experimental Approach
(2006) Rothstein, Bo; Eek, Daniel; QoG Institute
The main question addressed in this paper is how the great variation in the level of social trust between different countries can be explained? Most empirical research on this question has been based on survey data which has limits when it comes to capturing the causal mechanisms. Building on theories that point at the importance of trustworthy governmental institutions for creating social trust, two parallel experiments were conducted in two countries were the levels of corruption and social trust are very different. One group of 64 Swedish and one group of 82 Romanian undergraduate students responded to a number of scenarios in which another person’s efforts to try to receive immediate assistance from an authority were described. These encounters varied within groups in terms of (1) whether or not a bribe was used in order to receive immediate assistance, (2) whether the other person or the official took the initiative to request/offer immediate assistance in exchange for the bribe, and (3) outcome in terms of whether immediate assistance was approved or declined as a result of the offer or demand for a bribe. Type of authority (police vs. doctor) was a between-groups factor. Subsequent to each scenario, participants’ levels of various aspects of vertical and horizontal trust were measured. As hypothesized, the Romanian sample had reliably lower initial levels of horizontal trust than the Swedish sample. For both samples, however, the results showed the expected effects of bribe, initiator, and outcome on all dependent trust measures. The main results showed that bribe, initiator, and approved assistance decreased both vertical and horizontal trust. As such, the results supported the idea that trust in authorities influences the perceptions of the trustworthiness of others in general. Even though some of the effects were stronger for one sample than for the other, the influence of vertical trust on social trust was true for both the high- and the low-trusting sample.
The Mechanisms of Corruption: Interest vs. Cognition
(2006) Rothstein, Bo; Tegnhammar, Markus; QoG Institute
paper starts by identifying a central theoretical problem in contemporary research about political corruption. While a lot of energy has been spent trying to figure out what types of political and economic institutions that relates to low corruption, very little is yet known about the process of changing government institutions in a severely corrupt country in to the better. We address this problem by combining existing explanations of corrupt behaviour with the theoretical discourse of path dependency in institutional analysis. Two self-reinforcing mechanisms are developed which identifies the intrinsic obstacles to change in corrupt political institutions. One mechanism is interest based (the strategic resistance from corrupt networks) while the other is based on cognition (selffulfilling expectations). Both are analysed with material form five international agencies’ methods for fighting corruption. The agencies are the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (ERBD), the European Council, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) the Swedish International Aid Organization (SIDA) and Transparency International (TI) The empirical analysis is based on policy documents and on thirteen interviews with persons in these agencies who are responsible for anti-corruption policy. The result is that corruption is reproduced over time due to resistance from strategic interests and due to the self-fulfilling character of expectations about corruption. We end the paper by discussing the relative weight of cognitive vs. interest based explanations in institutional analysis.
Politiskt ledarskap för ändrad jämvikt? En teoretisk framställning och empirisk analys av politiskt ledarskaps betydelse för korruptionsbekämpning
(2007) Bokström, Tomas; QoG Institute
Det finns stora svårigheter att förklara hur en övergång från korruption till ickekorruption kan fås till stånd. Detta har även följder för den praktiska korruptionsbekämpningen. Ett av problemen är att politiskt ledarskap ses som viktigt samtidigt som förutsättningarna för detta att åstadkomma en förändring tycks små. Med utgångspunkt i att forskningen varit för strukturfixerad, samt den statsvetenskapliga förståelsen för politiskt ledarskap för outvecklad; försöker denna uppsats att undersöka hur politiskt ledarskap är betydelsefullt i en övergång från korruption till ickekorruption. Detta görs genom att ta teorier från ledarskapsforskningen och sedan med dessa som utgångspunkt analysera vilka idéer om politiskt ledarskap som återfinns i antikorruptionsstrategier och policydokument hos TI, Världsbanken och Sida. Studien visar att främst en kontextuell syn på ledarskap ger teoretiska förutsättningar för förändring av jämviktslägen. Samtidigt kan ett kontextuellt perspektiv kopplas till delar av TI:s och Världsbankens antikorruptionsstrategier. Brister i förståelsen av politiskt ledarskap indikeras av studien. En fortsatt utveckling av teorier om politiskt ledarskap visas därmed motiverad.
Demokratisk kompetens : om gymnasiet som demokratiskola
(2007) Ekman, Tiina
Aktivt medborgarskap är ett ledord i svensk demokratipolitik. Jämlikt deltagande i politiken är ett annat. Skolan anförtros en viktig politisk roll i detta avseende. Läroplanen påbjuder att alla ungdomar på ett likvärdigt sätt skall förberedas till ett aktivt samhällsliv. Oavsett valet av gymnasieprogram ska alla förberedas till en samhällsroll som "ansvarskännande individer som aktivt deltar i yrkes- och samhällslivet", bland annat genom att läsa samma obligatoriska kurs i samhällskunskap. Men räcker det för att göra ungdomar jämlikt aktiva? Från tidig ålder socialiseras de enligt olika normer i sin uppväxtmiljö. De har dessutom olika intressen och talanger. De har också större möjligheter än någon tidigare generation att välja utbildning efter egna preferenser. I "Demokratisk kompetens. Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola" undersöks 2684 18-åriga gymnasisters inställning till aktivt medborgarskap. Utifrån analysen tecknas en bild av ungdomars demokratiska kompetens, som avslöjar stora skillnader mellan elever som valt olika utbildningsvägar i gymnasiet. Dessutom presenteras nya rön om hur två olika dimensioner av demokratisk kometens - politisk självförtroende och demokratikunskaper - påverkar synen på olika former av politiskt deltagande.
Multi-level Europeans. The Influence of Territorial Attachments on Political Trust and Welfare Attitudes
(2007) Berg, Linda
The Quality of Government and Social Capital: A Theory of Political Institutions and Generalized Trust
(2007-03) Rothstein, Bo; Stolle, Dietlind; QoG Institute
The purpose of this article is to present a new theory on the generation of social capital. In the discussion about the sources of social capital it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. Since this approach lacks a micro-theory and has produced only mixed empirical evidence, we like to highlight instead how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. Not all political institutions matter equally, however, in fact we argue that trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial and fair street-level bureaucracies. The article presents the causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust, and illustrates its validity in a cross-national context.
Anti-Corruption - A Big Bang Theory
(2007-05) Rothstein, Bo; QoG Institute
Intergenerational Responsibility: Historical Emissions and Climate Change Adaptation
(2007-10) Jagers, Sverker C.; Duus-Otterström, Göran; QoG Institute
It is widely held that climate change requires that we engage in strategies of adaptation as well as mitigation, but the normative questions surrounding justice in adaptation remains insufficiently investigated. This paper asks, from a presumption that climate change adaptation presents burdens which needs to be fairly distributed between states, what a fair way of allocating remedial responsibility for adaptation would look like. A number of principles are analyzed, some of which attach normative weight to causal contribution to the problem and others not. The conclusion is that none of the suggestions prevalent in the literature is without profound problems, but a promising path for the future is to construct pluralistic models of justice which are sensitive to both a state’s level of pollution and its ability to pay. The paper ends, however, by predicting that while adaptation from a normative standpoint is an other-regarding duty, actual future adaptations regimes are likely to be market-based. Particularly likely is an insurance-based regime, according to which each state is expected to fend for its own protection.
Corruption as an Institution: Rethinking the Nature and Origins of the Grabbing Hand
(2007-11) Teorell, Jan; QoG Institute
The predominant view of corruption within political science and economics today is the principal-agent model. Corruption is modeled as criminal behavior on behalf of some agents entrusted to act on the behalf of some principals. According to this view the criminal behaviour of corruption could be made to disappear by fixing the incentive structure or the institutional setting. The purpose of this paper is to question this way of conceptualizing endemic corruption. By modelling corruption as an institution in itself, rather than as some form of illicit behaviour, both the causes and consequences of corruption appear in a different light. Most importantly, whereas the principal-agent model stresses a vertical dimension of conflict produced by and reproducing corruption, that between rulers and ruled or electors and elected, an institutional view of corruption instead stresses horizontal conflicts between different sectors of society which may benefit or loose from corruption. An application of this perspective is sketched in which corruption is seen as a regressive tax, which opens up for applying a set of theoretical models of distributional conflict to the study of corruption in relation to economic inequality and democracy.
The Good Society Index
(2007-11) Holmberg, Sören; QoG Institute

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