Electoral Competition, Accountability and Corruption:Theory and Evidence from India

Farzana Afridi, Sourav Bhattacharya, Amrita Dhillon, and Eilon Solan,
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Amrita Dhillon,: Department of Political Economy, Kings College, London, and CAGE, University of Warwick
Eilon Solan,: School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: In developing countries with weak enforcement institutions, there is implicitly a large reliance on electoral incentives to reduce corruption. However electoral discipline works well only under some conditions. In this paper we study the effect of electoral competition on corruption when uncertainty in elections is high (or accountability is low), as in many developing countries . Our theory focuses on the case of high uncertainty and shows that in this case there is a U-shaped relationship between electoral competition and corruption. We illustrate the predictions of the model with village level data on audit detected irregularities and electoral competition from India.

Keywords: Corruption; Electoral Competition; Uncertainty; Audit; Accountability JEL Classification: D72; D82; H75; O43; C72. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-isf and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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