Department of Political Science / Statsvetenskapliga institutionen

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2 Pre-Election Tax Enforcement in Sub-Saharan Africa
(2021-06) Tengs, Elise; The Quality of Government institute
Using the literature on the political business cycle as a point of departure, this paper investigates whether incumbent politicians manipulate the enforcement of tax collection prior to elections, in order to win votes. Whereas previous literature has focused on macro level measurement, this paper turns the attention to the micro level, and introduces a novel measurement for the enforcement of tax regulations on an individual level. The paper investigates this question using 70 country-rounds of survey data from Sub-Saharan Africa combined with data on the timing of elections. There is no clear-cut evidence for such policy manipulations on an aggregate level, but findings indicate that this might differ depending on the incumbent’s level of political support. These findings are relevant to everyone working on how to strengthen tax administrations in developing countries in order to increase public revenue and improve quality of government.
2How People Around the WorldassessDemocracy Communicating Online
(2020-08) Holmberg, Sören; The QoG institute
2The effect of gender on corruption: Sorting out explanations for gender differences with new exper-imental research
(2019-12) Kubbe, Ina; Alexander, Amy; Wängnerud, Lena; The QoG institute
An extensive literature demonstrates a relationship between gender and corruption, with women be-ing less involved in corrupt transactions than men. There are two major ways of explaining this cor-relation; one emphasizes differences between men and women in risk-aversion and the other differ-ences in pro-social behavior. However, whether there is support for these explanations is never di-rectly tested. We take advantage of one opportunity for gathering this evidence by replicating and extending a well-cited experimental study by Alatas et al. (2009). Through our extension of the Alatas et al. study, we were able to collect unique information on gender differences in rationalizations of experimental subjects’ behavior. The key finding is that we see significant gender differences in rea-sons for behavior: the results indicate risk-seeking behavior among men but not risk aversion among women. Instead, pro-social reasoning is apparent among women.
A Deadly Mismatch? The Problem of HIV/AIDS in Research and Policy
(2010-03) Persson, Anna; Sjöstedt, Martin; QoG Institute
According to research, HIV/AIDS is not a disease among others but displays a number of specific characteristics. To begin with, it is primarily a sexually transmitted disease and hence involves a large number of taboos compared to many other diseases. In addition, the incubation period is extremely long compared to most other diseases. Furthermore, protection from HIV/AIDS demands sacrifices in the form of behavior changes within the (very) private sphere that not only involves material, but also non-material, costs. Since HIV/AIDS differs from other diseases in these regards, the combating of the disease demands a different approach compared to, for example, the combating of Malaria and Tuberculosis. In this paper, we investigate whether these insights have penetrated the international donor community. Every year, billions of dollars are disbursed to fight HIV/AIDS. Yet, the progress has been slow and the disease continues to spread. By reviewing contemporary international HIV/AIDS policy, this paper tests if the lack of success in the fight against HIV/AIDS can potentially be explained by the misconceptualization of the disease on behalf of donors.
A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset
(V-Dem Institute, 2021-02) Maerz, Seraphine F.; Edgell, Amanda B.; Wilson, Matthew C.; Hellmeier, Sebastian; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Gradual processes of democratization and autocratization have gained increased attention in the literature. Assessing such processes in a comparative framework remains a challenge, however, due to their under-conceptualization and a bifurcation of the democracy and autocracy literatures. This article provides a new conceptualization of regime transformation as substantial and sustained changes in democratic institutions and practices in either direction. This allows for studies to address both democratization and autocratization as related obverse processes. Using this framework, the article introduces a dataset that captures 680 unique episodes of regime transformation (ERT) from 1900 to 2019. These data provide novel insights into regime change over the past 120 years, illustrating the value of developing a uniﬁed framework for studying regime transformation. Such transformations, while meaningfully altering the qualities of the regime, only produce a regime transition about 32% of the time. The majority of episodes either end before a transition takes place or do not have the potential for such a transition (i.e. constituted further democratization in democratic regimes or further autocratization in autocratic regimes). The article also provides comparisons to existing datasets and illustrative case studies for face validity. It concludes with a discussion about how the ERT framework can be applied in peace research.
A General Theory of Power Concentration: Demographic Influences on Political Organization
(2016) Gerring, John; Jaeger, Jillian; Maguire, Matthew; V-Dem Institute
Why is the exercise of political power highly concentrated in some polities and widely dispersed in others? We argue that one persistent causal factor is demographic. Populous polities are characterized by more concentrated structures of authority. To explain this relationship we invoke two mechanisms: efficiency and trust. The theory is demonstrated with a wide variety of empirical measures and in two settings: (1) cross-country analyses including most sovereign states and extending back to the 19th century and (2) within-country analyses focused on states, counties, and localities in the United States.
A Network Model of Decision Making Applied to the European Union
(2009-03) Naurin, Daniel; Thomson, Robert; QoG Institute
Network structures constrain and enable political actors. Nonetheless, few models of decision making in international politics take network relations into account. We formulate and test a network model of decision making that incorporates the influence relations among political decision makers. In the first stage of the model, decision makers influence each other’s initial policy positions on controversial issues through their network relations. The extent to which this influence leads to changes in decision makers’ initial policy positions depends on the presence of network ties with other actors and the relative salience of the issue to the decision makers. In the second stage of the model, decision makers take a decision on the basis of their revised policy positions. The dataset we use to test the model combines information on the network relations among the member states’ representations to the EU and decision-making actors’ initial policy positions on controversial issues. The network model generates more accurate predictions of decision outcomes on these issues than does an appropriate baseline model. We draw out the implications of our findings for understanding the role of network relations in international politics.
A New Era of Party Politics in a Globalised World. The Concept of Virtue Parties
(2008-09) Demker, Marie; QoG Institute
A Quality of Government Peace? Bringing the State Back Into the Study of Inter-State Armed Conflict
(2010-09) Råby, Nils; Teorell, Jan; QoG Institute
Domestically, democracy or democratization has not proved as successful in bringing about preferred economic and social consequences as has “good governance” and quality of government. Within the field of international relations, by contrast, one of the strongest empirical regularities still remains that democracies do not wage war against each other. In this paper we show however that the impact of quality of government, most notably corruption, on the risk of interstate conflict by large amounts trumps the influence of democracy. These results draw on dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes data in 1984-2000, and hold even under control for the capitalist peace, incomplete democratization, realist claims and geographic constraints. We argue that the causal mechanism underlying this finding is that quality of government reduces information asymmetry among potentially warring parties, improves their ability to communicate resolve, and to credibly commit to keeping to their promises.
A Short History of Contestation and Participation
(2022-01) Boese, Vanessa; Wilson, Matthew; V-Dem Institute
Contestation and participation are commonly viewed as the two constituent dimensions of electoral democracy. How exactly have these two dimensions been conceptualized and measured in the literature? Are they empirically observable and do they matter for democratic development and stability? This paper answers the first of these questions and considers their implications for the second by reviewing the literature on democracy’s dimensions. We highlight three issues that affect conclusions about dimensions of democracy and their relevance for understanding democratic development: First, conceptual ambiguities — substantive overlap between the two concepts — obscure the meanings of each of the two dimensions. Such ambiguities led to a second issue, which is concept-measurement mismatch. The conceptual contributions were never really met with an empirical equivalent that would allow us to properly measure the two dimensions. Scholars continue to invoke theoretical understandings from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, however, but represent them using measures that were not explicitly concerned with measuring them, which presents the third issue of concept reification. As a result of these three issues, inference about how democracy has developed and their relevance for democratic stability or for transitions to democratic rule has been difficult. Based on these issues, we provide three suggestions for future research on dimensions of democracy.
Accepting the Inevitable or Resisting Quietly? Responses to Corruption and Competence in Highly Corrupt Environments
(2018-11) Vera, Sofia; QoG Institute
The literature studying citizen responses to exposed political corruption is rapidly growing. While some studies explore how information credibility and group identities can reduce the electoral impact of the exposure of corruption, this article addresses different mechanisms for weak electoral accountability for corruption: public works provision and corruption prevalence. It uses a vignette experiment embedded in a national survey in Peru to isolate the causal effect of political corruption on electoral support. The results suggest that even types of corruption with side benefits would be harshly punished when attributed to incompetent politicians. They also indicate that while voters punish corruption more leniently when a candidate is competent, they respond negatively to corruption regardless of the prevalence of corruption, which casts doubt on the idea that voters in highly corrupt environments are tolerant of corruption.
Accountability in Swedish Political Parties? Survey evidence of misconduct and whistleblowing
(The Quality of Government Institute (QoG), 2023-10) Niklasson, Birgitta; Bågenholm, Andreas; Dawson, Stephen; De Fine Licht, Jenny
Agency Design, Favoritism and Procurement in the United States
(2019-05) Dahlström, Carl; Fazekas, Mihály; Lewis, David E.; QoG Institute
The U.S. federal government spend s huge sums buying goods and services from outside of the public sector. Given the sums involved, strategic government purchasing can have electoral consequences. In this paper, we suggest that more politicized agencies show favoritism to entrepreneurs in key electoral constituencies and to firms connected to political parties. We evaluate these claims using new data on United States government contracts between 2003 and 2015. We find that executive departments, particularly more politicized department - wide offices, are the most likely to have contracts characterized by non - comp etitive procedures and outcomes, indicating favoritism. Politically responsive agencies – but only those – give out more non - competitive contracts in battleground states. We also observe greater turnover in firms receiving government contracts after party change in the White House, but only in the more politicized agencies. We conclude that agency designs that limit appointee representation in procurement decisions reduce political favoritism.
Agency Problems and the Politics of Administrative Reorganization
(2017-05) Holmgren, Mikael; The QoG Institute
While scholars have long argued that political uncertainty leads governments to enact organizational structures that insulate agencies from future control by opposing groups, they have paid less attention to what governments can do to cleanse agencies from past insulation efforts. In this paper, I argue that governments often reorganize their bureaucracies precisely to ameliorate the agency problems that past governments have imposed upon them. To illustrate the principal lines of argument, I trace the lifecycles of all agencies in the Swedish executive administration between 1960 and 2014 and show that they suffer considerably greater risk of termination when an ideological opponent of the government is responsible for appointing their heads. Because all agency heads serve on fixed-terms in the Swedish case, all incoming governments are bound to inherit the appointees of their predecessors. However, only in some situations are they bound to inherit the appointees of opposing groups—namely, following partisan shifts in government. I conclude that structural insulation can both deter and encourage political interventions in bureaucratic operations.
Aid by Democratic Versus Autocratic Donors: Democratization Processes and Citizens’ Perceptions in Recipient Countries
(2023-08-21) Gafuri, Adea
OECD countries are no longer the sole major providers of financial flows abroad. Authoritarian countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, with their distinct practices and implementation processes, are increasingly present in low- and middle-income countries. In this Ph.D. dissertation, I develop and test hypotheses on the influence of foreign aid on democratization processes and citizens’ attitudes in recipient countries. Employing a multi-method approach, using observational and experimental methods, I analyze the role of democratic donors such as the European Union (EU) and autocratic donors like China, both together and separately. I find that democratic donors like the EU, who target democratic institutions via democracy assistance can foster democratization. I argue that democracy assistance is effective when aid is coupled with political conditionality and monitoring mechanisms. On the other hand, aid from autocratic donors like China can decrease support for democracy, especially among those who view autocratic donors very positively. Autocratic aid impacts these perceptions through (1) attribution processes, i.e., individuals learn about aid projects that are implemented close to where they live (2) the instrumentalization of aid by political elites, i.e., political elites influence citizens by spreading information about the benevolence and generosity of authoritarian donors. Finally, this Ph.D. dissertation demonstrates that foreign donors’ attributes convey to citizens how likely corruption is in the project and how responsive their local government and donors will be in implementing such projects. The political regime of the donor, whether democratic or autocratic, signals the level of responsiveness to citizens’ demands. On the other hand, whether a donor is transparent or not, indicates the risk of corruption in the project and in the local government.
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.
An Interactive Model of the Democratic Peace: Revisiting the Theory with Elastic Measures
(2018) Altman, David; Rojas-de-Galarreta, Federico; Urdinez, Francisco; V-Dem Institute
Democracies do not take up arms against each other. This axiom has attained the status of a mantra in the field of international relations. As previous research has shown, however, the truth of this statement is highly contingent on the definitions of both democracy and conflict. Based on this fact, this project has two aims: one empirical and one theoretical. Empirically, it revises this literature, making three substantial improvements: 1) it uses a more robust and transparent measure of democracy (V-DEM); 2) it does not rely on arbitrary cut points between democratic and non-democratic regimes; and 3) it combines the theoretical perspectives of similarity-based and normative views on the reasons behind the peace among regimes. These methodological improvements allow us to generate a new theory of democratic peace, which complements both similarity-based and institutional arguments. We find robust evidence that the higher a dyad’s level of democracy, and the smaller the difference between the democratic scores of its members (‘democratic spread’), the lower the probability of war (and also militarized interstate disputes, MID) between that pair of states. Thus, not only is the core principle of the democratic peace revealed to be strong enough to withstand different measures of democracy, but it also offers an alternative explanation of conflict.
Anti-Corruption - A Big Bang Theory
(2007-05) Rothstein, Bo; QoG Institute
Are Carbon Dioxide Emissions Decoupled from GDP Growth in Well-functioning Democracies?
(2017) Lægreid, Ole Martin; Povitkina, Marina; V-Dem Institute
Empirical studies of the relationship between GDP per capita and country-level CO2 emissions tend to focus on the direct effect of per capita GDP growth, rarely taking political institutions into consideration. This paper introduces theoretical insights from environmental political science research, which suggests that CO2 emissions models would gain explanatory leverage if moderators gauging political institutions were considered. We test these theories by estimating the potentially moderating effects of democracy, corruption, veto points and players, and civil society activity. Our results suggest a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, which is barely affected by any variations in political and institutional factors. The only significant moderator in our analysis is bicameralism in democratic, low corrupt countries, which generates a stronger effect of per capita GDP growth at low levels of GDP per capita. Our analysis thus lends rigor to studies in environmental economics that find a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, and does not provide support for theories common in environmental political science research.
Are different types of corruption tolerated differently?
(2023-11) Pozsgai-Alvarez, Joseph; Varraich, Aiysha; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
In the past two decades, abundant research on corruption has established its negative impact on human well-being. Indeed, general scholarship finds that it is appropriately shunned across contexts, with citizens in different cultures and contexts expressing a general aversion to corruption. However, what is less explored is whether different types of corruption are tolerated differently. To address this question, we explore citizen attitudes towards different types of corruption in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Romania, and Spain. Participants were presented with vignettes describing different corrupt scenarios—specifically, traffic bribery, nepotism, state capture, patronage, embezzlement, clientelism, conflict of interest, and quid pro quo—and asked to score each one on an 11-point Likert scale. We used a neutral narrative in the vignettes to minimize the bias that may be introduced through the wording. Our results suggest different types of corruption are tolerated differently. Specifically, tolerance of corruption (1) varies across types of corruption, with embezzlement and patronage being, on average, the least and most tolerated types of corruption, respectively; (2) varies across countries, with respondents from Indonesia and Spain being, on average, the most and least tolerant, and (3) varies across countries for the same type of corruption, with respondents expressing more consensus about their disapproval of embezzlement compared to that of clientelism, nepotism, or conflict of interest. The study finds several statistically significant differences in tolerance of corruption across countries and scenarios, reflecting the versatility of corruption and the importance of specification and contextualization when devising public anticorruption initiatives.

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