تمرکز زدایی سیاسی و فساد : شواهد از سراسر جهان

How does political decentralization affect the frequency and costliness of bribe extraction by corrupt officials? Previous empirical studies, using subjective indexes of perceived corruption and mostly fiscal indicators of decentralization, have suggested conflicting conclusions. In search of more precise findings, we combine and explore two new data sources—an original cross-national data set on particular types of decentralization and the results of a firm level survey conducted in 80 countries about firms' concrete experiences with bribery. In countries with a larger number of government or administrative tiers and (given local revenues) a larger number of local public employees, reported bribery was more frequent. When local—or central—governments received a larger share of GDP in revenue, bribery was less frequent. Overall, the results suggest the danger of uncoordinated rent-seeking as government structures become more complex.

How does political decentralization affect the frequency and the costliness of corrupt bribe extraction by officials? Theories suggest conflicting conclusions. On one hand, by bringing officials “closer to the people” or encouraging competition among governments for mobile resources, decentralization might increase government accountability and discipline. On the other hand, decentralization could impede coordination and exacerbate incentives for officials at different levels to “overgraze” the common bribe base. More generally, one might expect a variety of effects associated with different types of decentralization to operate simultaneously, pulling in many directions, with different strength in different contexts. A number of scholars have sought to answer this question empirically by looking for relationships between measures of political or fiscal decentralization and cross-national indexes of perceived corruption derived from surveys of risk analysts, businessmen and citizens. In particular, scholars have examined perceived corruption ratings produced by Transparency International (TI), the World Bank (WB), and the business consultancy Political Risk Services, which publishes the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG). The findings of these studies have been mixed and sometimes mutually contradictory.

Previous studies, using subjective indexes of perceived corruption, have offered conflicting conclusions about how political and fiscal decentralization affect the frequency of bribery in countries around the world. Given the complicated, interacting effects that theorists have posited, it seems quite unlikely a priori that there exists a simple, general relationship between decentralization and corruption that holds in different contexts and geographical settings. We do not suppose this paper will settle the question. Still, the data considered here have advantages over those previously analyzed. We examine a large-scale survey designed to elicit responses based on the concrete experience of the businessmen interviewed. Questions concerned corruption in particular settings as well as in general. We combine this with data on different types of decentralization that are more detailed and specific than those of previous papers, most of which have focused on just fiscal decentralization. Among the countries and firms surveyed, several patterns stand out. In countries with a larger number of administrative or governmental tiers, reported bribery was both more frequent and more costly to firms. Other things equal, in a country with six tiers of government (such as Uganda) the probability that firms reported “never” being expected to pay bribes was .32 lower than the same probability in a country with two tiers (such as Slovenia). More tiers were associated with more frequent bribery over government contracts, connection to public utilities, and customs, but the effect was particularly strong for obtaining business licenses and over tax collection. The effect was strongest in developing countries, and was not significant in just the richer countries taken separately. As the number of tiers in a country gets high, this effect appears to overwhelm some factors otherwise related to the extent of bribery such as the size of firms or the country's religious tradition.