Clarity of Responsibility, Accountability, and Corruption

Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rice University, Houston and her work focuses on institutions and presidential systems with a regional focus on Latin America and developing democracies. She has published her work in the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Electoral Studies, British Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies and Legislative Studies Quarterly. She has published two books, Political Power and Women's Representation in Latin America and The Gendered Effects of Electoral Institutions: Political Engagement and Participation. Margit Tavits is a Professor of Political Science at Washington University, St Louis. Her work is grounded in democratic institutions with a geographic focus on Europe, industrialized democracies, and post-communist countries. She has published this work at top journal outlets including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, British Political Science Review, European Political Science Review and Comparative Political Studies. She has published two books, Presidents with Prime Ministers and Post-Communist Democracies and Party Organization.

• 1. Introduction; 2. A clarity of responsibility theory of corruption; 3. A dataset of democracy and corruption; 4. Clarity of responsibility and aggregate corruption perceptions; 5. Corruption voting - a survey analysis; 6. Corruption and accountability - an experimental analysis; 7. The effect of clarity on elite efforts to combat corruption; 8. Beyond anticorruption efforts - elite attention to corruption; 9. Conclusions.

'Schwindt-Bayer and Tavits address an extremely important problem, political corruption, which has loomed large in the substantive politics of many countries and is widely recognized as impeding economic development and undermining democratic processes. Most political science work on causes of corruption has identified cultural and contextual factors that are difficult to alter in the short run. The authors argue, and demonstrate persuasively, that the level of clarity of responsibility in the political system, a feature responsive to change in legal and constitutional features (such as election laws and executive-legislative relations), is as important as the usual contextual factors in shaping corruption levels. This persuasive book, based on aggregate analyses, surveys, and an experiment, is very well written and accessible to the nontechnical reader, while still maintaining rigorous standards of high-quality research.' G. Bingham Powell, Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester, New York