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- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Careers, connections and corruption risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes
- 2017
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Ingår i: The Journal of Politics. - : University of Chicago Press. - 1468-2508 .- 0022-3816. ; 79:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,000 public sector employees in 212 European regions—and a new objective corruption risk measure including over 1.4 million procurement contracts. Both show a remarkable subnational variation across Europe. The study finds that corruption risks are indeed significantly lower where bureaucrats’ career incentives exclusively follow professional criteria. In substantial terms, moving EU regions so that bureaucrats’ merit and effort would matter as much as in, for example, Baden-Wüttemberg (90th percentile) could lead to a 13–20 billion Euro savings per year.
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| 2. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Change and Continuity in Quality of Government: Trends in subnational quality of government in EU member states : Cambio y Continuidad en la Calidad del Gobierno: Tendencias en los gobiernos subnacionales calidad del gobierno en los estados miembros de la UE
- 2022
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Ingår i: Investigaciones Regionales – Journal of Regional Research. - : Asociacion Espanola de Ciencia Regional. - 1695-7253 .- 2340-2717. ; :53, s. 5-23
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite massive investments, studies suggest that anti-corruption efforts often times fail and that countries and regions with historically deficient quality of government tend to be stuck in a vicious cycle of high levels of corruption and inadequate public service delivery. However, this study suggests that despite the stickiness of subnational quality of government, regional quality of government does shift over time. Using the 2021 European Quality of Government Index (EQI), and comparing the results to previous rounds of this survey, we show that there has indeed been noticeable shifts in the regional level of Quality of Government both within countries and across time. Overall, we find a slight increase in the perceived quality of government of European regions compared with 2017. However, some regions have evaded the positive trend, most notably in Poland and Hungary, whose response to the pandemic – probably not coincidentally – has involved important infringements of democratic rights and institutions. These changes in Quality of government call for a close mapping of the trends within countries and across regions and a focus on their determinants. To this end, the paper also serves as an introduction to the use of 2021 European Quality of Government (EQI) index, which is the most comprehensive survey to date to measure perceptions of subnational quality of government with a total of 129,000 respondents in 208 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions and all EU 27-member state countries.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe: A Measure for Assessing Quality of Government in 206 European Regions
- 2015
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Ingår i: Social Indicators Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0303-8300 .- 1573-0921. ; 122:2, s. 315-346
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Do aspects of quality of government, broadly defined, such as corruption, impartiality, and quality of public services, vary below the country level? The concept of quality of government (QoG) and various measures to assess it have become more ubiquitous in several social science disciplines. QoG is related with economic and social development, better environmental conditions, and better quality of life. Yet while governance indicators have proliferated in recent years, their focus remains almost universally on analysis at the country level. Moreover, the majority of indices rely on expert assessments, as opposed to the assessments of citizens, who are the on-the-ground consumers of public services. Building on a preliminary round of data collected in 2010, this study, for which data were collected in 2013, presents a novel and comprehensive index that captures the quality of governance for 206 regions in 24 European countries. The 'European Quality of Government Index', which will be published free for scholarly use, is built on the largest survey to date focusing on governance at the regional level; over 85,000 citizens were surveyed. The instrument proposed here builds on both perceptions and experiences of citizens in public service areas such as health care, education, and law enforcement. The paper presents final results of the survey, as well as a sensitivity analysis and checks for external and internal validity.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring Meritocracy in the Public Sector in Europe: a New National and Sub-National Indicator
- 2016
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Ingår i: European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0928-1371 .- 1572-9869. ; 22:3, s. 499-523
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since the late nineteenth century, the presence of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy has been posited as an advantage for effective bureaucratic behaviour and a means of limiting patrimonial networks and corruption, among other benefits. There is little consensus on how the features of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy should be measured across countries, however, and broad empirical studies are therefore rare. What is more, the few such studies that exist have advanced measures which are constructed exclusively on expert surveys. Although these have indeed contributed to the knowledge in the field, the data on which they are built come with problems. This paper proposes a set of novel measures that complement existing measures and thus fill important gaps in this burgeoning literature. The measures we present are not based on expert assessments but on perceptions of public sector employees’ and citizens’. We create two measures—that can be combined into one—from a recent survey (2013) of over 85,000 citizens in 24 European countries. One is purely based on the assessments from public sector employees’ and the other is based on perceptions of citizens working outside the public sector. The paper also discusses the survey and explores the external validity of the measures provided here, showing correlations with alternative measures based on expert opinions, as well as variables from the literature that we would expect to correlate highly with a meritocratic bureaucracy.
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| 7. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring Quality of Government in EU Regions across Space and Time
- 2019
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Ingår i: Papers in Regional Science. - : Wiley. - 1056-8190 .- 1435-5957. ; 98:5, s. 1925-1953
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A wave of recent cross‐national research has pointed to the positive consequences for countries with high levels of ‘quality of government’ (QoG), broadly defined, such as corruption, impartiality, and quality of public services (Mauro 2004; Norris 2012; Holmberg et al 2009). Yet the question of how QoG varies at the sub‐national level is still widely overlooked, in particular with measures that are available over time. To address it, we present the third round of data from the regional ‘European Quality of Government Index’ (EQI) survey (Charron, Dijkstra and Lapuente 2014; Charron, Lapuente and Rothstein 2013), collected in 2017 and built upon the opinions of 78.000 respondents in 193 regions from 21 European countries. The data provides several contributions to the literature. First, while the majority of QoG‐type indices rely on expert assessments, the EQI relies on the assessments of citizens, who are the on‐the‐ground consumers of public services. Second, the data begins to show trends on QoG variation over time, as well as across European regions. Consequently, this data is the most comprehensive sub‐national data to date; mapping of QoG within and across EU countries over the past decade. Building on previous rounds of data collected in 2010 and 2013, the 2017 EQI, which is published free for scholarly use, builds on both perceptions and experiences of citizens in public service areas such as health care, education, and law enforcement. This paper presents the results of the latest survey, improved with respect to the previous ones, discussion of trends across space and over time, as well as interesting avenues for future research that we detect across European regions.
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| 8. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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No Law without a State
- 2010
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Ingår i: QoG Working Paper Series. ; :2010:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 9. |
- Charron, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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No Law without a State
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Comparative Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0147-5967. ; 40:2, s. 176-193
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What explains cross-country differences in the quality of institutions, such as judicial independence and government regulations of economic life, and in desirable social and economic outcomes, such as a low degree of corruption and high degree of rule of law? In some of the most widely cited publications in the field of economics and political science, scholars have claimed that such cross-country variation is explained by a country’s legal origin (common law or civil law tradition). It is claimed that because of stronger legal protection for outside investors and less state intervention, common law countries have achieved higher levels of economy prosperity and social life than civil law countries. To a large extent, this hypothesis has been corroborated by much empirical evidence. This paper proposes an alternative interpretation of the cross-country differences observed. Building on scholarly studies of state formation developments, the basic proposition of this paper is that the state formation process affects the character of the state infrastructure to be either patrimonial or bureaucratic, which in turn affects institutions and social outcomes. We argue that this fundamental distinction of state formation precedes the legal origins of a country and thus offers superior explanatory power. This argument is tested empirically on a set of 31 OECD countries. It is shown that the state infrastructure is indeed more influential than the legal traditions on a set of institutional variables (formalism, judicial independence, regulation of entry and case law) as well as on a set of social outcomes (corruption, rule of law, and property rights).
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