IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v128y2013i3p1397-1448.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Emergence of Political Accountability

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Bidner
  • Patrick Francois

Abstract

When and how do democratic institutions deliver accountable government? In addressing this broad question, we focus on the role played by political norms--specifically, the extent to which leaders abuse office for personal gain and the extent to which citizens punish such transgressions. We show how qualitatively distinct political norms can coexist because of a dynamic complementarity, in which citizens' willingness to punish transgressions is raised when they expect such punishments to be used in the future. We seek to understand the emergence of accountability by analysing transitions between norms. To do so, we extend the analysis to include the possibility that, at certain times, a segment of voters are (behaviorally) intolerant of transgressions. Our mechanism highlights the role of leaders, offering an account of how their actions can instigate enduring change, within a fixed set of formal institutions, by disrupting prevailing political norms. We show how such changes do not depend on "sun spots" to trigger coordination, and are asymmetric in effect--a series of good leaders can (and eventually will) improve norms, whereas bad leaders cannot damage them. JEL Codes: D72, P16, C73. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Bidner & Patrick Francois, 2013. "The Emergence of Political Accountability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 128(3), pages 1397-1448.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:128:y:2013:i:3:p:1397-1448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjt014
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Daron Acemoglu & Tarek A. Hassan & Ahmed Tahoun, 2018. "The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt’s Arab Spring," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(1), pages 1-42.
    2. Christian Bjørnskov, 2020. "Why do military dictatorships become presidential democracies? Mapping the democratic interests of autocratic regimes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(1), pages 21-43, October.
    3. Alessandro Belmonte, 2021. "Sophisticated electoral accountability," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(2), pages 233-260, June.
    4. Dagaev, Dmitry & Lamberova, Natalia & Sobolev, Anton, 2019. "Stability of revolutionary governments in the face of mass protest," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Tuomas Pekkarinen & Kjell G. Salvanes & Matti Sarvimäki, 2021. "The Making of Social Democracy: The Economic and Electoral Consequences of Norway’s 1936 Folk School Reform," NBER Working Papers 29095, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Acemoglu, Daron & Ajzenman, Nicolas & Aksoy, Cevat Giray & Fiszbein, Martin & Molina, Carlos, 2021. "(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support," IZA Discussion Papers 14691, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Valasek, Justin, 2018. "Dynamic reform of public institutions: A model of motivated agents and collective reputation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 94-108.
    8. Jean-Philippe Platteau & Guilia Camilotti & Emmanuelle Auriol, 2017. "Eradicating women-hurting customs: What role for social engineering?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-145, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. James Habyarimana & Stuti Khemani & Thiago Scot, 2023. "The importance of political selection for bureaucratic effectiveness," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(359), pages 746-779, July.
    10. Humphreys, Macartan & de la Sierra, Raúl Sánchez & der Windt, Peter Van, 2019. "Exporting democratic practices: Evidence from a village governance intervention in Eastern Congo," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 140, pages 279-301.
    11. Fabrizio Adriani & Silvia Sonderegger, 2018. "The Signaling Value of Punishing Norm-Breakers and Rewarding Norm-Followers," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-32, December.
    12. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Camilotti, Giula & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 2017. "Eradicating Women-Hurting Customs: What Role for Social Engineering?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12107, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Baxter Jamie, 2019. "Leadership, Law and Development," The Law and Development Review, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 119-158, January.
    14. Humphreys, Macartan & Sánchez de la Sierra, Raúl & Van der Windt, Peter, 2019. "Exporting democratic practices: Evidence from a village governance intervention in Eastern Congo," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 279-301.
    15. van der Windt, Peter & Humphreys, Macartan & Medina, Lily & Timmons, Jeffrey F. & Voors, Maarten, 2019. "Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 52(12), pages 1810-1840.
    16. Chris Bidner & Patrick Francois & Francesco Trebbi, 2014. "A Theory of Minimalist Democracy," NBER Working Papers 20552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Liu, Ce & Ali, S. Nageeb, 2019. "Conventions and Coalitions in Repeated Games," Working Papers 2019-8, Michigan State University, Department of Economics.
    18. Miquel Pellicer & Patrizio Piraino & Eva Wegner, 2014. "Information, mobilization, and demand for redistribution: A survey experiment in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 139, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    19. Alessandro Bucciol & Luca Zarri, 2013. "Lying in Politics: Evidence from the US," Working Papers 22/2013, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    20. Wu, Jiabin & Zhang, Hanzhe, 2021. "Preference evolution in different matching markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    21. Jean-Pierre Chauffour, 2018. "Morocco 2040," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28442, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    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:oup:qjecon:v:128:y:2013:i:3:p:1397-1448. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.