Culture Rules: The Foundations of the Rule of Law and Other Norms of Governance

Amir N. Licht, Chanan Goldschmidt and Shalom Schwartz ()

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

Abstract: This study presents evidence about relations between national culture and social institutions. We operationalize culture with data on cultural dimensions for over 50 nations adopted from cross-cultural psychology and generate testable hypotheses about three basic social norms of governance: the rule of law, corruption, and accountability. These norms correlate systematically and strongly with national scores on cultural dimensions and also differ across cultural regions of the world. Regressions indicate that quantitative measures of national culture are alone remarkably predictive of governance, that economic inequality and British heritage add to predictive power, but that economic development and other factors add little. The results suggest a framework for understanding the relations between fundamental institutions of social order as well as policy implications for reform programs in transition economies.

Keywords: Rule of Law; Corruption; Accountability; Culture; Governance; Economic Inequality; Economic Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K00 O10 O19 P20 P26 P50 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2003-07-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: Culture rules: The foundations of the rule of law and other norms of governance (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wdi:papers:2003-605

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