Importance of Status Quo When Lobbying a Coalition Government

Lobbying a coalition government is different from lobbying a single-party government, since in the case of a coalition government, the interest group can intervene in the intragovernmental decision process. In the case where the interest group prefers the status quo to the surplus maximizing policy, the interest group influences the policy without any contribution due to its credible threat to block unfavorable proposals. Furthermore, we show that when, say, a leftist coalition government may be replaced by a rightist coalition government, the final policy reflects a rightist interest group's preferences more heavily due to the interest group's forward-looking considerations.</p

Decentralization and veiled corruption under China's "rule of mandates"

This paper shows why corruption is especially difficult to detect under China’s system of decentralized authoritarian rule, which I call a “rule of mandates.” Local officials must pursue high priority political targets but have immense discretion over which laws to implement. A relative standard for corruption consequently arises since non-implementation of laws may be mandate-serving or may be corrupt; and determining which requires extra information on why non-implementation occurred. The theory is supported by evidence from original survey and case research on the implementation of the village elections law. I discuss implications for anticorruption efforts, development patterns, and future research