Corruption scandals seem to abound in countries that have recently undergone reform. Despite the proliferation of stories in the news media, no one has examined whether reform—be it democratization or economic liberalization or both—actually causes an increase in corruption. Theory provides...

The article proposes an enabling mechanism for the creation, adjustment and dissolution of governmental units, giving autonomy to each resident as in a direct democracy. Rather than focusing on a narrow model with restrictive and specialized assumptions, and subsequent solutions, as has been...

In this paper we investigate how “civil service” personnel management interacts with bureaucratic discretion to create high capacity, expert bureaucracies populated by policy-motivated agents. We build a model in which bureaucrats may invest in (relationship specific) policy expertise, and...

Important conceptualizations of both interest groups and bureaucratic agencies suggest that these institutions provide legislatures with greater information for use in policy making. Yet little is known about how these information sources interact in the policy process as a whole. In this paper...

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in {\em dynastic governments}. It has been suggested that ``horizontal accountability," i.e., a system of governance where auditing functions lie outside the executive branch, can ensure credible disclosure of information....

Globalisation, governance and economic performance affect each other in very complex mutual relationships. In this paper, we establish a clear and well-circumscribed hypothesis: “is there an effect of globalisation on governance?” To test this hypothesis or, even more specifically, to test...

In earlier papers on “Socialist privatization” Feige proposed a sequential set of stabilization, privatization and liberalization policies designed to provide the necessary, albeit not sufficient conditions, for a transition from a planned to a market economy. An important component of the...

The Soviet Union and the nations of Eastern Europe are undergoing a historically unprecedented restructuring as they move inexorably from centrally planned economies toward market economies. This historic transition must be guided by a coherent set of stabilization policies to reduce the threat...

This paper examines the question of whether a communist nation, characterized by state ownership of the means of production and a centrally planned command system of allocation can be transformed into an efficient market oriented economy without fully compromising the socialist ideals of an...