Does media freedom improve government effectiveness? A comparative cross-country analysis

Isabel-María García-Sánchez (), Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros () and José Valeriano Aceituno ()
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Isabel-María García-Sánchez: University of Salamanca
Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros: University of Salamanca

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2016, vol. 42, issue 3, No 6, 515-537

Abstract: Abstract Government effectiveness could be explained by the level of well-informed electorate members, who use the press to learn more about politicians and public servants. Thus, a free press may improve citizens’ accessibility to this information, which in turn will make it more difficult for politicians and public servants to cover up or get away with corrupt behaviour, so the quality of the government could be affected by the media freedom. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to determine the effect of the freedom of the press on government effectiveness, considering additionally environmental, institutional, and political characteristics as factors that could determine the level of government effectiveness. To achieve this aim, we examined 202 central governments and compared them across countries using the World Bank data set of Governance Indicators for 2002–2008. The results show that the media, the organizational environment, and political characteristics may be determinants of the level of government effectiveness, taking countries’ economic development into account.

Keywords: Government effectiveness; Media; Political factors; Gender diversity; H1; H4; H7; I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10657-014-9462-z

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