Decentralization (localization) and corruption : new cross-country evidence, Vol. 1 of 1

About

Countries

Data & Research

Learning

News

Projects & Operations

Publications

Topics

Home > Data & Research > Document Search > Report Details

Decentralization (localization) and corruption : new cross-country evidence

Author:	Ivanyna, Maksym; Shah, Anwar;	Collection Title:	Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5299
Country:	World;	Date Stored:	2010/05/10
Document Date:	2010/05/01	Document Type:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English	Region:	The World Region
Report Number:	WPS5299	SubTopics:	Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures; Governance Indicators; National Governance; Banks & Banking Reform; Subnational Economic Development
Volume No:	1 of 1

Summary: This paper attempts to improve the understanding and measurement of decentralization and its relationship with corruption in a worldwide context. This is done by presenting the conceptual underpinnings of such relationship as well as using superior and more defensible measures of both decentralization in its various dimensions as well as corruption for a sample of 182 countries. It is the first paper that treats various tiers of local governments (below the inter-mediate order of government) as the unit of comparative analysis. In contrast, previous analyses erroneously focused on subnational governments as the unit of analysis which yields invalid cross-country comparisons. By pursuing rigorous econometric analysis, the paper demonstrates that decentralization, when properly measured to mean moving government closer to people by empowering local governments, is shown to have significant negative effect on the incidence of corruption regardless of the choice of the estimation procedures or the measures of corruption used. In terms of various dimensions of decentralized local governance, political decentralization matters even when we control for fiscal decentralization. Further voice (political accountability) is empirically shown to be more important in combating corruption than exit options made available through competition among jurisdictions.


Official Documents Official, scanned versions of documents (may include signatures, etc.)
File Type		Description	File Size (mb)

	PDF 38 pages	Official version*	2.66 (approx.)
	Text	Text version**

* The official version is derived from scanning the final, paper copy of the document and is the official,
archived version including all signatures, charts, etc.

** The text version is the OCR text of the final scanned version and is not an accurate representation of the final text.
It is provided solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/NYU950RCW0