Decentralization, Corruption and Government Accountability: An Overview

Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee

No dp-152, Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics

Abstract: The impact of government decentralization on economic performance and growth is a hotly contested issue. Waves of decentralization occurred in many developing countries over the past few decades, following the demise of a development paradigm in which centralized states played a leading role (see for instance, case studies of decentralization covering over half the world’s population in Bardhan and Mookherjee 2005b). The trends toward greater decentralization has been motivated by disenchantment with previous centralized modes of governance, owing partly to a perception that monolithic government bred high levels of rent-seeking, corruption and lack of accountability of government officials. An important research question, therefore, concerns the effects of decentralization on corruption. Can decentralization be a useful institutional reform to reduce corruption, or might corruption increase as political power shifts downward?

Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2005-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hpe, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published, For `Handbook of Economic Corruption’ edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman, Edward Elgar

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bu.edu/econ/workingpapers/papers/Dilip%20Mookherjee/wp2005/decorr.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bu.edu/econ/workingpapers/papers/Dilip%20Mookherjee/wp2005/decorr.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bu.edu/econ/workingpapers/papers/Dilip%20Mookherjee/wp2005/decorr.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Decentralization, Corruption And Government Accountability: An Overview (2005)
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:bos:iedwpr:dp-152

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Program Coordinator ().