Corruption as a Last Resort

Why do ordinary people engage in corruption? In Corruption as a Last Resort, Kelly M. McMann contends that bureaucrats, poverty, and culture do not force individuals in Central Asia to pay bribes, use connections, or sell political support. Rather, corruption is a last resort when relatives, groups in society, the market, and formal government programs cannot provide essential goods and services. Using evidence from her long-term research in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, McMann shows that Islamic institutions, secular charities, entrepreneurs, and banks cannot provide the jobs and credit people need. This drives individuals to illicitly seek employment and loans from government officials

Measuring Subnational Democracy

Social scientists and practitioners have been limited in their work by the paucity of data about subnational institutions and practices. Such data could help scholars refine regime typologies, improve theories of democratization and regime change, better understand subnational democracy, and illuminate issues of development, conflict, and governance. They could also enable democracy and development advocates to design more effective programs and officials to create better policies. This paper addresses the lack of data by introducing 22 subnational measures from a new dataset, Varieties of Democracy. Validity tests demonstrate that the measures’ strengths outweigh their weaknesses. The measures excel in covering all subnational levels for most countries, capturing different elements of subnational elections, and including a variety of dimensions of elections and civil liberties. The measures also offer unmatched global and temporal coverage. The paper demonstrates how these strengths can provide scholars and practitioners with the benefits described above.I am grateful for comments on earlier versions of this paper from Brigitte Seim and Jan Teorell. This paper also benefited greatly Andrew Slivka’s review of existing work, Matthew Maguire’s assistance with the design and execution of the first convergent validity test, and Mark Patteson’s and Hayley Rassuchine’s research assistance. The development of the measures themselves benefited from discussions with V-Dem colleagues, particularly John Gerring and Jan Teorell, consultations with scholars of subnational democracy, and research assistance from Brandon Mordue. These measures would not exist were it not for the enormous amount of time and effort Michael Coppedge and Staffan Lindberg devoted to development and management of V-Dem. This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13- 0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Swedish Research Council, Grant C0556201, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Jan Teorell, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden; and by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V- Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; ) and for V-Dem data collection and aggregation by the Swedish Research Council and the National Science Foundation (SES-1423944). We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems

Corruption as a Last Resort

Why do ordinary people engage in corruption? In Corruption as a Last Resort, Kelly M. McMann contends that bureaucrats, poverty, and culture do not force individuals in Central Asia to pay bribes, use connections, or sell political support. Rather, corruption is a last resort when relatives, groups in society, the market, and formal government programs cannot provide essential goods and services. Using evidence from her long-term research in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, McMann shows that Islamic institutions, secular charities, entrepreneurs, and banks cannot provide the jobs and credit people need. This drives individuals to illicitly seek employment and loans from government officials

Symbiotic transitions: Democratic development and economic independence in post -Soviet provinces.

Why does democracy develop unevenly within countries undergoing political reform? Democratization theories imply that the national government uniformly builds democracy throughout the country, but in neither federal nor unitary systems does the national government direct reform in the provinces. Instead, democracy develops in those regions where citizens have multiple opportunities for earning income. When citizens cannot easily find employment outside the state's purview or outside their province, local officials can effectively sanction behavior that challenges government authority. In regions with little economic opportunity, threats of job loss, firings, and repeated state inspections of private businesses effectively discourage citizens from engaging in the civic activity that undergirds democracy. Economic and political reforms are not merely compatible, as recent scholarship suggests, but democratization actually requires prior, or at least concurrent, market reform. Local democracy is important in transition countries because it enables people to solve problems no longer resolved by the state. Democratization of authoritarian and post-totalitarian regimes reduces the state's role in society, contributing to a decline in government services and causing citizens to grow averse to democracy. However, democratization at subnational levels allows nongovernmental groups to form and provide services once offered by the state. By mitigating some of the negative effects of democratization, private service provision encourages citizens to tolerate additional political reforms. In the long-term citizens may even embrace democracy, as these new service-providers solve problems more effectively than the state once did. These conclusions were reached by conducting two surveys, 252 in-depth interviews, and observational studies in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. The focus of the fieldwork was on the Russian provinces Samara and Ul'ianovsk and the Kyrgyzstani provinces Osh and Naryn. Studying subnational democracy in the different cultural, economic, and institutional settings of Russia and Kyrgyzstan increased the generalizability of the findings.Ph.D.Political scienceSocial SciencesSocial structureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132420/2/9963847.pd

Corruption as a last resort : adapting to the market in Central Asia

An absence of alternatives : a new framework for understanding corruption -- Alternatives to corruption and the impact of market reform : the arguments and their theoretical implications -- Bribery, favoritism, and clientelism : evidence from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan -- Market actors as an unrealized alternative : the impact of market reforms -- Islamic institutions and secular charities : obstacles to providing substitute resources -- Families : the uneven impact of market reforms -- Reducing corruption : policy recommendations -- Appendix : statistical analysisKelly M. McMannIncludes bibliographical references and inde

Democratic Consolidation: A Theory of Territorial Consolidation

How does democracy develop throughout a country once leaders in the national capital introduce or expand civil liberties and hold competitive elections—in other words, after democratic transition? The subnational democracy literature has shown that non-democratic subnational political regimes can endure within countries even after democratic transition. Yet, the democratic consolidation literature has not addressed how these enclaves are eliminated throughout the country or the territorial consolidation of democracy. This paper offers an explanation for the territorial consolidation of democracy. We argue that greater corruption control, a shift toward a unitary system of government, and a move toward centralized candidate selection promote territorial consolidation. Statistical analyses using V-Dem data, which cover 182 countries from 1900 to 2017, provide support for our argument