EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Testing Alternative Theories of Bureaucratic Corruption in Less Developed Countries*

Nafisa Halim

Social Science Quarterly, 2008, vol. 89, issue 1, 236-257

Abstract: Objective. Recent studies offer myriad explanations for why bureaucratic corruption is more pervasive in certain countries than others. However, relatively little empirical work has been done comparing competing explanations of bureaucratic corruption. In this article, I test informal, formal, and cultural control explanations against one another in an effort to understand cross‐national variation in bureaucratic corruption. Methods. Using cross‐sectional and longitudinal data, this article tests the hypotheses with ordinary least squares (OLS), tobit, ordered probit, and fixed‐ and random‐effects models. Results. Democracy, strong judiciaries, and parliamentary democracy in particular reduce the prevalence of bureaucratic corruption. Conclusions. This study proposes that electoral accountability and judicial efficacy produce “good” politicians, and “good” politicians monitor bureaucrats well enough to reduce bureaucratic corruption. Future research should attempt to create a direct measure of the quality of politicians variable.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2008.00530.x

Related works:
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:bla:socsci:v:89:y:2008:i:1:p:236-257

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:89:y:2008:i:1:p:236-257