The Adverse Effects of Sunshine: A Field Experiment on Legislative Transparency in an Authoritarian Assembly
@article{Malesky2012TheAE, title={The Adverse Effects of Sunshine: A Field Experiment on Legislative Transparency in an Authoritarian Assembly}, author={Edmund J. Malesky and Paul Schuler and Anh Tuan Tran}, journal={American Political Science Review}, year={2012}, volume={106}, pages={762 - 786} }
An influential literature has demonstrated that legislative transparency can improve the performance of parliamentarians in democracies. In a democracy, the incentive for improved performance is created by voters’ responses to newly available information. Building on this work, donor projects have begun to export transparency interventions to authoritarian regimes under the assumption that nongovernmental organizations and the media can substitute for the incentives created by voters. Such…
105 Citations
Policing politicians: Citizen empowerment and political accountability in Uganda -Preliminary analysis (IGC Working Paper)
- Political Science
- 2012
We use a simple model of political accountability to derive a set of hypotheses linking access to information to political behavior and provide results from a multi-level eld experiment designed to…
How Transparency Affects Distributional Politics: A Field Experiment among Elected Incumbents in Malawi
- Economics
- 2017
How does transparency affect distributional politics? We theorize that transparency conditions how officials choose among recipient communities, compelling them to allocate to needy communities…
The Unintended Effects of Bottom-Up Accountability: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Peru
- Political ScienceQuarterly Journal of Political Science
- 2022
Past research suggests that increasing citizen political knowledge and coordination can improve government performance via “bottom-up accountability,” where mobilized local communities exert pressure…
Testing Legislator Responsiveness to Citizens and Firms in Single-Party Regimes: A Field Experiment in the Vietnamese National Assembly
- Political ScienceThe Journal of Politics
- 2021
We investigate whether communicating constituents’ preferences to legislators increases the responsiveness of delegates to the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA). Using a randomized control trial, we…
The Power of Empty Promises
- Political Science
- 2017
In authoritarian regimes, seemingly liberal reforms are often poorly implemented in practice. However, this study argues that even weak quasi-democratic institutions can offer resources to political…
The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators
- Political Science
- 2015
Does external monitoring improve democratic performance? Fact-checking has come to play an increasingly important role in political coverage in the United States, but some research suggests it may be…
Transparency to curb corruption? Concepts, measures and empirical merit
- Political Science
- 2017
Policymakers and researchers often cite the importance of government transparency for strengthening accountability, reducing corruption, and enhancing good governance. Yet despite the prevalence of…
How corruption investigations undermine regime support: evidence from China
- Political SciencePolitical Science Research and Methods
- 2021
Abstract Authoritarian leaders around the world often fight against corruption in an effort to win public support. Conventional wisdom holds that this strategy works because leaders can signal their…
Access to Information Laws and Voter Behavior: Does Transparency Increase Participation?
- EconomicsSSRN Electronic Journal
- 2019
Electoral participation is an integral component of democracy and can be an effective tool in the battle against corruption. However, encouraging participation in areas with highly corrupt…
The regional consequences of authoritarian power-sharing: Politburo representation and fiscal redistribution in China
- EconomicsJapanese Journal of Political Science
- 2019
Abstract Much political economy research examines how higher-level political representation of the constituent jurisdictions affects resource redistribution among the lower-level units in…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 85 REFERENCES
Nodding or Needling: Analyzing Delegate Responsiveness in an Authoritarian Parliament
- Political ScienceAmerican Political Science Review
- 2010
Recent scholarship argues that one solution to ensure longevity and economic growth in an authoritarian regime is to co-opt potential opposition by offering them limited policy influence in a…
The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships
- Political Science
- 2013
Why do some dictatorships establish institutions that may constrain their leaders? We argue that institutions promote the survival of dictatorships by facilitating authoritarian power-sharing.…
Policing Politicians: Citizen Empowerment and Political Accountability in Africa1
- Political Science
- 2007
Does greater transparency improve governmental performance and increase political accountability? In this paper, we describe a unique field experiment designed to estimate the impact of increased…
Transparency is not Enough: Making Transparency Effective in Reducing Corruption
- Political Science
- 2010
We test the commonly stated, but rarely investigated, assertion that making political institutions more transparent is an effective method for combating corruption. This assertion is confirmed with…
Elections under authoritarianism: Preliminary lessons from Jordan
- Political Science
- 2006
This study examines the politics of elections in authoritarian regimes, focusing on Jordan. Specifically, it considers (1) what is the role of elections in authoritarian regimes? (2) How can we…
Seeing the State: The Implications of Transparency for Societal Accountability
- Political Science
- 2010
International organizations and NGOs promote transparency as a necessary condition for enhancing accountability and curbing corruption. Transparency is predicted to deter corruption in part by…
The Single-Party Dictator’s Dilemma Information in Elections Without Opposition
- Computer Science
- 2010
This paper demonstrates that single-party regimes, in particular, forsake information on overall regime support and strength of opposition in favor of information on the popularity of local notables and the compliance of local officials with central mandates in Vietnam.
Can Voters be Primed to Choose Better Legislators? Experimental Evidence from Rural India
- Economics
- 2010
Ethnic politics and political corruption are important concerns in many developing country democracies. We conducted field experiments in rural India to examine the responsiveness of voter…
Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953-1994
- Economics
- 2007
This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country’s 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications…
Enforcing the rule of law : social accountability in the new Latin American democracies
- Political Science
- 2006
Reports of scandal and corruption have led to the downfall of numerous political leaders in Latin America in recent years. What conditions have developed that allow for the exposure of wrongdoing and…