Electoral Accountability, Public Administrator Behaviour & Democratic Legitimacy

• In Event: Policy and Accountability Inside and Outside of Campaigns

Abstract

The difference between how democracies work in theory and in practice is at the heart of the discipline of public administration. Improving knowledge regarding how to produce predictable, regular outcomes in democratic governance is a fundamental objective of the public administration scholar. However, surprisingly little is known about how established democracies can develop pathologies even after many years of democratic rule. I approach the question by analysing a case of dysfunction in an established democracy. Using novel data on a political scandal in Italy and a Difference-in-Differences estimation strategy, I provide evidence that a sudden increase in electoral accountability for national politicians impacts negatively upon the behaviour of local-level public administrators. In those (treated) districts where deputies are accused of malfeasance, provincial level public administration corruption increases significantly as compared to non-treated districts. My results show that, in a dysfunctional democracy, an accountability-enhancing phenomenon can trigger a series of mechanisms within the political machine that lead to overall welfare-decreasing outcomes. This has implications regarding democratic design and how to tackle failures of accountability.

For the analysis, I have assembled a novel dataset combining microdata on Italian politicians from all levels of government (municipal, provincial, regional and national) with official judiciary accusations of corruption by individual politicians and provincial-level measures of public administrator corruption. By matching politicians to the public administrations in their respective constituencies, I am able to investigate the relationship between electoral accountability and the behaviour of the public administrator. The specific institutional setting presents an exogenous shock in electoral accountability. This allows for the analysis of how public administrative behaviour changes as public scrutiny increases accountability through legal repercussions for malfeasant politicians.

The context under analysis here is Italy's First Republic. More specifically, the period surrounding the ‘Clean Hands’ investigations that upended the Italian political status quo. The investigations started in 1992 and revealed practically ubiquitous political corruption, causing public outrage. Waves of nationwide arrests occurred with subsequent trials and intense media attention. Prior to the investigations, Italian politicians engaged in patronage practices, appointing public officials on a non-meritocratic basis. Thus, the personal link between politician and public official in a given constituency during this period was arguably direct in many cases. Scholars have indeed argued that the ‘bad bureaucracy’ experienced in Italy over these years was purposefully fostered by politicians in order to offer constituents services to navigate the dysfunctional system and boost their personal vote. As such, two channels could be at work in influencing administrative malfeasance when a MP is accused of corruption. Firstly, a network effect whereby the central node in a group of malfeasant officials is eliminated and, thus, the network dissolves. Secondly, a perception-based effect whereby public administrators experience their political overseer being punished and feel that they, too, are being more closely scrutinised.

The timing of two specific elections and the sudden furore created by the ‘Clean Hands’ investigations created a context in which the government was still composed of the same ‘kinds' of politicians as in the past, but many more arrests were made than under usual circumstances. Empirically, this means that ceteris paribus many more cases of (allegedly) corrupt activity are able to be identified, creating a discontinuity in the unearthing of corrupt actions by politicians. This allows me to measure the effects of an exogenous shock to electoral accountability on the behaviour of those public administrative bodies geographically linked to politicians accused of corruption.

Author

• Eleanor Florence Woodhouse, European University Institute