The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections

Loren Brandt () and Matthew Turner

William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Abstract: The belief that elections reduce rent seeking by government officials is widely held, likewise the belief that rent seeking decreases as elections are less subject to corruption. In this paper we develop and test a model in which these beliefs are carefully examined. Our model indicates that, while elections may provide a disincentive for rent seeking, this disincentive (1) need not actually materialise, and (2), is not necessarily correlated with the integrity of the electoral protocol. We next consider the ability of village-level elections in rural China to reduce rent seeking, and the extent to which this ability varies as the elections are more or less corruptible. We find that in practice, even elections that appear quite corruptible provide a strong disincentive to rent seeking. Moreover, our results indicate which types of electoral reform lead to more effective popular oversight of leaders, and which do not.

Keywords: Elections; Property rights; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 H0 H7 Q0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2003-08-01
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:
Working Paper: The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections (2006)
Working Paper: The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections (2003)
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