Political and Judicial Checks on Corruption: Evidence from American State Governments

James E. Alt and David Lassen
Additional contact information
James E. Alt: Department of Government, Harvard University

No 05-12, EPRU Working Paper Series from Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: The paper investigates the effects of checks and balances on corruption. Within a presidential system, effective separation of powers is achieved under divided government, with the executive and legislative branches being controlled by different political parties. When government is unified, no effective separation exists even within a presidential system, but, we argue, can be partially restored by having an accountable judiciary. Our empirical findings show that divided government and elected, rather than appointed, state supreme court judges are associated with lower corruption and, furthermore, that the effect of an accountable judiciary is stronger under unified government, where government cannot control itself. The effect of an accountable judiciary seems to be driven primarily by judges chosen through direct elections, rather than those exposed to a retention vote following appointment.

Keywords: separation of powers; corruption; rent seeking; checks and balances; political institutions; judicial independence; rule of law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2005-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-05-12.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-05-12.pdf [301 Moved permanently]--> https://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-05-12.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: POLITICAL AND JUDICIAL CHECKS ON CORRUPTION: EVIDENCE FROM AMERICAN STATE GOVERNMENTS (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:epruwp:05-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EPRU Working Paper Series from Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics �ster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().