IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iiessp/0612.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Separation of powers and accountability: Towards a formal approach to comparative politics

Author

Listed:
  • Persson, Torsten

    (Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University)

  • Roland, Gerard

    (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

  • Tabellini, Guido

    (Bocconi University)

Abstract

A political constitution is like an incomplete contract: it spells out a procedure for making decisions and for delegating power, without specifying the content of those decisions. This creates a problem: the appointed policymaker could use this power for his own benefit against the interests of the citizens. In democracies, elections are the primary mechanism for disciplining public officials. But elections are not sufficient. Separation of powers between executive and legislative bodies helps the voters, in two distinct ways. First, it can elicit information held by the appointed officials and not otherwise available to the voters. Second, by playing one body against the other and by aligning the interest of the weaker body with their own, the voters can induce the two bodies to discipline each other. Separation of power only works to the voters' advantage if it is appropriately designed, however, and it can be detrimental if it creates a 'common pool' problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Persson, Torsten & Roland, Gerard & Tabellini, Guido, 1997. "Separation of powers and accountability: Towards a formal approach to comparative politics," Seminar Papers 612, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:343133/FULLTEXT01
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Political Economy > Corruption

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Omar Azfar & William Nelson, 2007. "Transparency, wages, and the separation of powers: An experimental analysis of corruption," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 471-493, March.
    2. Wihlborg, Clas, 2005. "Solving the bargaining democracy problem using a constitutional hierarchy for law," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 655-673, April.
    3. Jess Benhabib & Adam Przeworski, 2010. "Economic growth under political accountability," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 6(1), pages 77-95, March.
    4. Berthold Herrendorf & Manfred Neumann, 2000. "A nonnormative theory of inflation and central bank independence," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 136(2), pages 315-333, June.
    5. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1999. "Political economy, information and incentives1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 649-669, April.
    6. Shann Turnbull, 2007. "Analysing Network Governance of Public Assets," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 1079-1089, November.
    7. Brown, David S. & Touchton, Michael & Whitford, Andrew, 2011. "Political Polarization as a Constraint on Corruption: A Cross-national Comparison," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1516-1529, September.
    8. Piketty, Thomas, 1999. "The information-aggregation approach to political institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 791-800, April.
    9. Mark Latham, 2003. "Democracy and Infomediaries," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 91-101, April.
    10. Kausik Chaudhuri & Sugato Dasgupta, 2005. "The political determinants of central governments' economic policies in India: an empirical investigation," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(7), pages 957-978.
    11. Michael Mitsopoulos & Theodore Pelagidis, 2017. "A model of constitutional design and corruption," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 67-90, August.
    12. Shann Turnbull, 2017. "Grounding a Theory of Firms in the Natural Sciences," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 159-186, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political constitution; Separation of powers; common pool;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0612. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Hanna Christiansson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iiesuse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.