Corruption and Power in Democracies

Francesco Giovannoni and Daniel Seidmann

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: According to Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We study the implications of Acton’s dictum in models where citizens vote (for three parties) and governments then form in a series of elections. In each election, parties have fixed tastes for graft, which affect negotiations to form a government if parliament hangs; but incumbency changes tastes across elections. We argue that combinations of Acton’s dictum with various assumptions about citizen sophistication and inter-party commitments generate tight and testable predictions which cover plausible dynamics of government formation in an otherwise stationary environment.

Keywords: Corruption; government dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Corruption and power in democracies (2014)
Working Paper: Corruption and Power in Democracies (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:cmpowp:08/192

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