Transparency Against Corruption. A Cross-Country Analysis.

Transcription

1 Transparency Against Corruption. A Cross-Country Analysis. Catharina Lindstedt, Ph.D. Cand. Department of Political Science, Goteborg University Catharina.Lindstedt@pol.gu.se Daniel Naurin, Marie Curie Fellow Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies European University Institute and Department of Political Science, Goteborg University Daniel.Naurin@pol.gu.se Paper prepared for the 20th World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) Fukuoka, Japan, July 9-13, 2006 Abstract We test the commonly stated but rarely investigated assertion that making political institutions more transparent may be an effective method for combating corruption. This assertion is confirmed with cross-national data, but also specified and qualified in several respects. Most importantly we find that looking only at average effects as earlier studies have done gives a misleading picture of the significance of transparency for corruption. Just making information available will not prevent corruption if such conditions for publicity and accountability as education, newspaper circulation and free and fair elections are weak. Furthermore, we find that transparency requirements which are implemented by the agent itself are less effective compared to non-agent controlled transparency institutions such as a free press. We also argue that the interaction between transparency and free and fair elections may provide an explanation to some ambiguous results found in previous research on democracy and corruption. 1

2 Transparency the release of information about institutions that is relevant to evaluating those institutions is an issue of major concern for the contemporary social sciences. In the international relations field transparency has been acknowledged for its potential to contribute to regime effectiveness (Mitchell 1998), to reduce the risks of conflicts and war (Schultz 1998, Fearon 1995) and for constituting a potential substitute for the poor prospects of democratic accountability of international organizations (Keohane and Nye 2003, Majone 1996). Economists have increasingly emphasised the crucial role played by information for avoiding market failures and for achieving efficient allocation of resources (Stiglitz 2000). The principalagent framework, popular among both economists and political scientists, is defined by the asymmetry of information between principal and agent (Miller 2005). In political philosophy the major development in democratic theory the last two decades has been the revival of deliberative democracy, where publicity is a core concept and where openness of debate has has a civilizing effect on political behavior (Elster 1998). It is no surprise thus that transparency is also promoted as one of the most important medicines against corruption the improper use of public office in exchange for private gain. In the recent decade there has been a massive wave of research and debate about the causes of corruption driven partly by the growing awareness that corruption is not just morally unacceptable but also a major impediment to development and growth in large parts of the world. 1 Bentham s classic affirmation of the power of the public eye is echoed in this literature: The greater the number of temptations to which the exercise of political power is exposed, the more necessary is it to give to those who possess it, the most powerful reasons for resisting them. But there is no reason more constant and more universal than the superintendence of the public (Bentham 1816 [1999], 29). In spite of the preoccupation of transparency at the verbal level in the corruption research, however, few studies have tried to demonstrate its effects empirically. 2

3 This article shows that transparency may indeed be an important remedy against corruption. Its main contribution, however, is to show and explain why this link is not as straightforward as is usually assumed. It is subject to two important conditions, we argue, which limit its reach: First, in order for transparency to alleviate corruption and other forms of agency shirking the information made available by transparency reforms must stand a reasonable chance of actually reaching and be taken in by the public what we will call publicity. Secondly, if the release and spread of information to the public is to affect the behavior of potentially corrupt government officials the public must have some sanctioning mechanism in its hands i.e. there must be a real possibility of accountability. Transparency in itself just making information available will do little to prevent corruption. Although certainly not making an argument against transparency this article therefore adds to a growing number of studies which attempt to give a more realistic picture of the potential of transparency as an instrument for improving political and social institutions. 2 Previous research on corruption has not been able to take these conditions into account, partly due to the common practice of mashing together the three concepts of transparency, publicity and accountability. This in turn, we believe, has to do with translation problems, when the often used framework of principal-agency theory is transferred from economic organizations and relationships to politics. We show how not distinguishing between these concepts have lead scholars to draw misleading conclusions about the significance of transparency for corruption. For instance, the authors of the most important comparative study so far on the effect on corruption of press freedom (which is an example of what we will call non-agent controlled transparency) calculate, on the basis of their statistical analysis, what an increase in the level of press freedom would mean for some countries. They conclude that if Nigeria, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, would manage to increase their press freedom to the level of Norway (in the top of the press freedom ranking), they would reduce their corruption to West 3

4 European levels (Brunetti and Weder 2003). However, as we will show, when taking into account such conditions for publicity and accountability as the level of education, newspaper circulation and free and fair elections it is not clear that a free press, or any other type of transparency, would be able to help Nigeria reduce corruption at all. In other countries, on the other hand, such as Romania, Russia or Mexico, where the prospects for publicity and accountability are better, increasing transparency would probably be an effective medicine against corruption. One important conclusion with respect to development policy therefore is that reforms focusing on increasing transparency should be accompanied by measures strengthening peoples capacity to act upon the available information if we are to see any effects on corruption. Transparency is no quick fix. In order to do its job with respect to corruption it is dependent on other factors, which may take a long time to improve. We also argue that the conditional effect of transparency provides a new piece to the puzzle of the complex relationship between corruption and democracy more generally. Our empirical analysis is based on a cross-country study of 110 countries, including several different operationalisations of the key variables. Transparency, publicity and accountability In the terminology of principal-agency theory transparency is one of the instruments available to a principal for controlling that its agent does not engage in shirking, i.e. pursues policies which promote its own interests rather than the interests of the principal. Principal-agent models usually assume that the information asymmetry about its actions to the agent s advantage is prohibitively costly to eliminate completely, but that the more it is reduced the less room there will be for shirking and the more efficient will be the delegation (Holmström 1979, 4

5 Miller 2005). The strong hopes tied to transparency in the corruption literature usually stems, explicitly or implicitly, from such a principal-agency perspective. The transfer of principal-agency theory from its original domains of application in economic organizations and markets (insurance problems and delegations within firms) to politics, however, although fruitful in many cases, involves some difficulties. With respect to transparency, one of the seminal articles on principal agent-models concludes that any informative signal [on the agent s action], regardless of how noisy it is, will have positive value (if costlessly obtained and administered into the contract) (Holmström 1979, 87). 3 But precisely the two conditions indicated in the parenthesis are less self-evidently satisfied in the relationship between voters and elected representatives, than for example between managers and employees. Costlessly obtained implies that transparent information reaches the principal without much problem, something which definitely can not be taken for granted when it comes to voters and elected representatives. Furthermore, the relationship between voters and their representatives is not regulated by legally enforceable contracts as in economic organizations. This raises questions about whether the principal, the people in this case, if it acquires information about a shirking agent actually has the necessary means to put sanctions on the agent. What happens to the causal relation between transparency and (lack of) agency shirking if the two assumptions of costlessly obtained information and legally enforceable contracts are lifted? We assume that rational politicians will shirk if the perceived benefit of shirking is large enough to exceed the uneasiness created by the combination of the potential costs of accountability and the perceived risk of actually having to face these costs. Thus, agency shirking, such as corruption, can be prevented by increasing the risk for or the costs of accountability or by decreasing the benefits of shirking. Here we leave aside factors potentially affecting the perceived benefits of corruption (including both economic factors such as the 5

6 level of wages of public officials and norms concerning the (im)morality of corruption potentially affecting self-esteem) and the possible costs of accountability (including for instance criminal law or loss of status and privileges connected to political power). Transparency enters the equation as a possible determinant of the probability of accountability. But accountability, we argue, is primarily a function of publicity rather than transparency. These concepts may be distinguished as follows. The concept of transparency captures the accessibility of information. Transparency literally means that it is possible to look into something, to see what is going on. A transparent institution is one where people outside or inside can acquire the information they need to form opinions about actions and processes within this institution. Information about agency behaviour is there for those principals who are willing and able to seek it. Publicity on the other hand means that the existing information is actually spread to and taken in by the principal. In a voter-elected representative relationship, transparency implies that documentation on the actions of the representatives is released, while publicity means that the content of this information has also become known among the voters. Clearly transparency will usually increase the chances of publicity. In most cases information that is relatively easily accessible would stand a greater chance of also reaching a broader public. But there will be no publicity, i.e. no actual exposure of actions to a public audience, no matter how transparent the process or the institution, if the available information about these actions is left unattended. There may be different reasons why transparent information does not always reach the principal. Lack of demand is one factor. A lot of information which is accessible in public records will never be spread to a broader audience of voters simply because they concern issues which are immediately interesting only to a small set of special interest groups. Although people generally are affected by a public policy act they are not always prepared to take the costs involved with informing themselves about the content and consequences of their elected 6

7 representative s decisions. A transparency reform may reduce these costs, but seldom to such a degree that the problem of rational ignorance would be avoided. Mediators, such as mass media and public interest organisations, may reduce even further the costs of collecting information. Rather than having to check the public records themselves voters may only have to go to the newspaper stand or turn on the TV. Lack of mediators, therefore, is another factor which may hinder transparent information from becoming subject to publicity. The degree to which the media reaches out to people varies a lot between countries and regions of the world (Islam 2003). Furthermore, the media may itself be corrupt or may not be free to report what is uncomfortable facts for the political elite. Public interest organisations, on the other hand, are subject to well known collective action problems which may limit their effectiveness. Another reason why transparent information may not actually reach a principal concerns the capacity of the principal itself to access and process the information. Even though the costs for collecting information are low a basic capacity to analyse its content is necessary in order to be able to act upon it. Again considering voters in a democracy especially the level of education will therefore be an important mediating factor between transparency and publicity. The higher the level of education the stronger the capacity of people both to access and process information from the media and public records, and subsequently the greater the chances for publicity. Obviously these factors linking transparency and publicity demand, mediators, education are closely interconnected. They all concern the key problem of physically available information not always being costlessly obtained. In our empirical analysis we will use the levels of education and newspaper circulation in a country for capturing the publicity variable. Better conditions for publicity may increase the probability of accountability and subsequently lead to less agency shirking. 4 7

8 Publicity thus is an intervening variable linking transparency and accountability, but it is not always a sufficient one. Again we need to look more closely at the concepts being used. Accountability is a concept which has flooded the political science and public administration literature for the last decade or so (Behn 2001). We have no reason here to debate the meaning of the concept of accountability, but we do want to separate it from transparency and publicity. Accountability involves something more than just having one s actions publicly exposed. In case of misconduct accountability should imply that some kind of sanction is imposed on the actor. Being held accountable involves paying the price for one s actions (Manin, Przeworski & Stokes 1999). Sometimes the embarrassment and social stigma of having one s bad behaviour exposed to the public may in itself constitute a costly sanction. But in other cases an actor may not care too much about its reputation as long as its power is not threatened. Increasing the risk of publicity will not induce any change in behaviour on the part of the agent unless it believes that the principal will go from awareness to action and actually impose the costs of accountability. And in order to take that step the principal must have some instrument in its hands for holding the agent accountable. The probability of accountability is therefore a function of the probability of publicity and the existing sanctioning mechanisms. In an economic relationship the ultimate sanction getting sued in court is clear. In politics it is not always that easy. The most important sanctioning mechanism in politics, and the one we will employ in the empirical analysis, is the ability of the people to choose and to remove the ruling government in general elections. Conceptual clarity is always a virtue, but the point here is rather that distinguishing between transparency, publicity and accountability gives a more nuanced and accurate picture of the causal relationships involved. In our case it leads to the following hypothesis: Transparency will be a less effective medicine against corruption when it is not accompanied by institutional and other circumstances favourable to achieving also publicity and accountability. 8

9 Two types of transparency The most important empirical research efforts so far with respect to transparency and corruption are the studies which have included press freedom in their analyses of the causes of corruption. A free and independent press willing and able to investigate and report on corrupt behaviour on the part of government officials belongs to a type of transparency institutions which we will call non-agent controlled transparency. Other forms of whistle-blower institutions, such as freedom for public officials to impart information, also fall in this category. The distinguishing feature of this type of transparency is that information about agency behaviour is released by a third party, rather than by the agent itself. Agent-controlled transparency, on the other hand, refers to information released by the agent in response to freedom of information acts and other requirements on the agent to make information about its activities available. Such requirements may have been externally imposed on the agent by the principal in order to increase control, or they may have been self-imposed by the agent with the purpose of increasing the principals confidence. 5 The distinction between agent controlled and non-agent controlled transparency, which has not been made before in the research, is an important one. These two types of transparency affect corruption for different reasons and possibly with different strengths. Agent controlled transparency may reduce corruption because it makes it more complicated to engage in corrupt behavior. Extensive sunshine laws and requirements to demonstrate detailed figures on budgets and spending implies that an agent who wants to proceed with corrupt activities must put more effort into concealing those. The corrupt actors will have to find ways to hide illegal money transfers and come up with credible explanations in the public records on where the money went, and perhaps why a certain public policy program did not achieve more in terms of output compared to the spending that went in to the program, etc. Possibly, some corruption will be 9

10 prevented as a result of the agent s anticipation that it would not be possible to hide it given the existing accounting requirements. However, the specific content of the information released will always be determined by the agent itself. Obviously, therefore, this information will not include any direct instances of corruption. Non-agent controlled transparency, on the other hand, rather than making life more complicated for corrupt actors makes it more dangerous. Fact-digging reporters and other whistle-blowers are not restricted to public records but may also, if they are successful, release secret files and witnesses documenting the agent s behavior. This information may include actual instances of corruption. If the whistle-blowers are able to give publicity to such information, and if there are accountability mechanisms available to the principal, the agent may have to face the costs of accountability. Of course, the level of press freedom in a country is to a large extent in practice controlled by the regime in power (this is an example of the difficulties of applying the principal-agent perspective to politics). Nevertheless, in the short run, the existence of a free press implies that there is always a risk for corrupt power-holders that information about their corrupt activities may be released. One potential difference between the two types of transparency is that non-agent controlled transparency may be more dependent on accountability mechanisms to work, according to the logic described in the previous section. While agent controlled transparency affects corruption by decreasing the ex-ante opportunities for corruption the effect of non-agent controlled transparency is based on the risk of being held accountable ex-post. We will return to this issue in the empirical analysis. The main picture given by the empirical studies on press freedom and corruption so far is that there is a strong negative correlation between these two variables. To date we know of five such studies. One of these failed to find a robust correlation (Lederman, Loayza and Reis Soares 2001), while the other four did find significant negative relationships (Brunetti and 10

11 Weder 2003, Besley and Prat 2004, Chowdhury 2004, Svensson 2005). The most ambitious and rigorous effort hitherto is that of Brunetti and Weder. They test two different press freedom indexes and four different measures of corruption both across countries and over time. The results demonstrate sizeable negative effects of press freedom on three of the four corruption indexes. Importantly Brunetti and Weder also address and refute the suspicion that there could be a potential endogeniety problem involved with respect to the causality between press freedom and corruption, stemming from the incentives for corrupt governments to restrict press freedom. If we are right, however, in that the effect of transparency on corruption is dependent upon the accompanying prospects for publicity and accountability, studying only average effects may be misleading. Our hypothesis would be that large variations in the effect of transparency depending on the level of education, the presence of wide-reaching media and the possibility of the people to freely elect their government may be hidden behind the average effects. 6 Thus, our main focus in the empirical analysis are the interaction effects of transparency, education, newspaper circulation and electoral democracy. The data One reason why few scholars have studied effects of transparency on corruption empirically has to do with measurement difficulties. While there are several cross-country indices measuring democracy and corruption there have been few useful indicators of transparency. 7 A major step forward in this respect has been the recent construction by the World Bank of two cross-country transparency indexes, which are used in this study. The World Bank distinguishes between an Economic and Institutional Transparency index and a Political Transparency index. Both are aggregate indexes composed of several sub-indicators collected from different sources. 8 The Economic and Institutional Transparency index has 13 sub-components, 11

12 including indicators of access to information laws, the publication of economic data, e- government, transparency in the budget process, transparency of policy and of the public sector. Political Transparency is composed mainly by indicators of press freedom and regulations concerning disclosure of political funding, but it also contains one indicator of political competition and one of freedom of speech. The most important qualitative difference between the two indexes is that Political Transparency, due to the heavy weight of press freedom in this index, includes a large element of non-agent controlled transparency. The Economic and Institutional Transparency index, on the other hand, is a measure of agent-controlled transparency. Given our definition of transparency the release of information about institutions that is relevant to evaluating those institutions we would have preferred that the Political Transparency index did not include political competition and free speech, which do not directly measure transparency but rather democracy in general. Nevertheless, overall these indexes should work well for our purposes. For sure they are the best available to date. For non-agent controlled transparency we will also use the press freedom indexes of Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders for robustness tests. This is especially important since one of our hypotheses concerns the interaction effect between transparency and electoral democracy. It also gives us an opportunity to make comparisons with previous studies of press freedom and corruption. Following our definitions of transparency and publicity the media, although in distinctly different capacities, have a role in achieving both. In its fact-digging function a free media may create transparency by making previously secret information available to the public. In its publishing function, on the other hand, it creates publicity to this information by spreading it to people. While Political Transparency and the press freedom indexes are measures of transparency, therefore, newspaper circulation captures one of the conditions for publicity. It is 12

13 important to note that a media with broad reach does not in itself guarantee a well-informed public, since the media may not be free to criticise the government. If the media is both free and widely circulated, on the other hand, the public should be better able to inform itself on the government s actions. Our hypothesis is that there will be an interaction effect between these two variables indicating that they will reinforce each others capacity to mitigate corruption. On newspaper circulation we use data from the World Bank. For the second publicity condition education we employ the World Bank index on the expected number of years of formal schooling. This is an indicator of an education system s overall level of development, according to the World Bank. For robustness we also test a measure of education from the UNDP (see appendix). Accountability is measured by electoral democracy, i.e. the degree to which the government is selected in free and fair elections. The existing comparative corruption research has often used measures of free and fair elections to capture democracy. This we find somewhat problematic since it does not consider civil liberties, such as transparency, freedom of speech, freedom of organisation etc, which usually are considered core features of democracy. Later we will argue that the practise of excluding civil liberties from the concept of democracy may be part of the explanation for the ambiguous results found in the research on democracy and corruption. In our case, however, it is precisely the electoral mechanism as a form of accountability institution that we want to analyse. Our main measure of electoral democracy will be Polity s index, which includes free and fair elections, while excluding civil liberties. For robustness we also use Freedom House s political rights index. In order to measure corruption comparative scholars have relied on indexes of perceived corruption constructed from surveys with inhabitants, domestic and foreign business people and country experts. Our main data set is the corruption index of the World Bank Governance Indicators, which has been frequently utilized in previous research. We also use the corruption 13

14 indexes of Transparency International and the International Country Risk Guide to corroborate our results. The three most important control variables besides democracy following the current research on the causes of corruption are economic development, rule of law and British colonial heritage. 9 Economic development is measured by GDP per capita. For rule of law we use data from UNDP which includes indicators of both law (the strength and impartiality of the legal system and order (popular observance of the law). Analysis and results Additive models First we test the unconditional average effect of transparency on corruption, to see if we find a similar picture as earlier studies on press freedom and corruption, which have indicated a sizeable negative effect. The base model includes transparency Economic and Institutional Transparency and Political Transparency representing agent-controlled and non-agentcontrolled transparency respectively along with the three control variables economic development, rule of law and British colonial heritage. The results of the OLS regression for the base model are given in the first two columns of table 1. Both Economic and Institutional (model 1) and Political Transparency (model 2) have significant negative effects on corruption. The effects are also relatively large, larger than that of rule of law in both models. So far the pattern from previous studies on press freedom is reproduced. Furthermore, the results are almost identical for agent-controlled transparency as for non-agent controlled transparency. Models 3 and 4 introduce electoral democracy as a control variable. The purpose here is to certify that the transparency effect is not in practice produced by the correlated existence of free and fair elections. This is a control that previous studies of press freedom and corruption have 14

15 not done in any adequate way. 10 The results indicate something important about the differences between the two types of transparency. While the effect of Political Transparency remains strong and highly significant Economic and Institutional Transparency (model 3) is substantially weaker and more uncertain. Although not shown here substituting electoral democracy for press freedom in model 3 also substantially weakens the effect of Economic and Institutional Transparency and makes it more uncertain. It seems that the strong effect of agent controlled transparency indicated in model 1 is partly spurious and can be explained to some extent by the fact that democratic governments are more willing to release data on their activities and performance. Non-agent controlled transparency, on the other hand, has a strong independent effect also when controlling for electoral democracy, and thus seems to be a more important check on corruption than agent-controlled transparency. The robustness checks varying the indices of corruption, transparency and democracy confirm these findings. 11 Interaction models The analyses so far confirm the main results of earlier studies of press freedom and corruption, indicating a strong negative effect of non-agent controlled transparency. However, we have hypothesised that the average effects may be concealing important conditional factors affecting the relationship between transparency and corruption. We test the hypothesis that the effect of transparency is dependent on conditions for publicity and accountability by looking at the interaction effects between transparency and education, newspaper circulation and electoral democracy respectively. Negative interaction effects would indicate that the power of transparency to reduce corruption is stronger in countries with higher levels of education, newspaper circulation and electoral democracy. Table 2 shows the results. The first two columns show the base regression with the interaction variables for education and Economic and Institutional Transparency (model 5) and Political 15

16 Transparency (model 6). Does a high level of education increase the negative effect of transparency on corruption? The answer is yes. There are significant negative interaction effects for both types of transparency. Increasing the level of education with one unit, on the scale from 0 to 10, adds 0.12 to the negative effect of Economic and Institutional Transparency and 0.11 to the effect of Political Transparency. The same goes for newspaper circulation. Models 7 and 8 show negative and significant coefficients for the interaction variables for newspaper circulation and the two types of transparency respectively. Higher levels of newspaper circulation increase the power of transparency to reduce corruption. The interaction effect is smaller for newspaper circulation than for education only about half the size for both types of transparency. The robustness tests, although with some uncertainty with respect to the education interaction, broadly confirm also these findings. 12 What does this mean in practice? Figure 1 illustrate the marginal effects of Economic and Institutional Transparency and Political Transparency on corruption for different levels of education and newspaper circulation. The slope of the line in the plots indicates the extent to which the transparency effect is dependent on these two conditions for publicity. The steeper the slope, the more increasing levels of education or newspaper circulation adds to the transparency effect on corruption. The dotted lines illustrate the confidence interval (95%), i.e. the degree of uncertainty of the estimated marginal effect of transparency on corruption. Important to note in the figures is whether the zero-line is encompassed within this interval or not. If it is, we cannot say with reasonable certainty that there is a marginal effect of transparency on corruption at all at that particular level of education or newspaper circulation. As can be seen in plot A this is the case for Economic and Institutional Transparency in countries with education levels lower than ca five (which is the level of for example South Africa and Russia). Although not shown here including electoral democracy as an additional 16

17 control variable, as in the additive models, further weakens the effect of Economic and Institutional Transparency. In such a model the transparency effect is statistically significant only at West European education levels. The amplifying effect of education is approximately equally strong for Political Transparency (Plot B) as for Economic and Institutional Transparency, but since Political Transparency in itself has a stronger impact on corruption it starts becoming significant at somewhere between three and four on the scale (which is equivalent to for instance Albania and Botswana). Education is the most important of the two publicity conditions tested here. 13 The interaction effects with newspaper circulation illustrated in plots C and D are weaker (indicated by the flatter slopes) and more uncertain (indicated by the wider confidence intervals). The flattening upper dotted line in both these plots indicates that the importance of higher degrees of newspaper circulation for boosting the transparency effect on corruption may diminish after reaching a certain level. In fact, we can not say for sure that widening the reach of the press above ca four on the scale (which is the level of for example the Czech Republic and Thailand) will do much difference for the effect of Political Transparency (plot D). In plot C the zero-line is within the confidence interval all the way, which means that in this model there is no significant effect of Economic and Institutional Transparency at all. This confirms our previous finding that agent-controlled transparency is a weaker and more uncertain remedy against corruption than non-agent controlled transparency. The result with respect to the publicity condition is clear: If the prospects for publicity are slim, the transparency effect on corruption will be slim. This applies both to agent controlled and non-agent controlled transparency, although the later is more effective in itself. On the other hand, if the conditions are such that information that has been publicly released also stands a substantial chance of being spread to and taken in by the public, especially non-agent controlled transparency (and to a lesser extent also agent-controlled transparency) may effectively reduce 17

18 corruption. Following our theoretical argument, however, a high probability of publicity is just one step in the causal chain between transparency and lower levels of corruption. Increasing chances/risks of publicity will enhance the uneasiness of corrupt policy-makers only if there is some mechanism of accountability including costly sanctions in place, which may be activated by such a public exposure. Our hypothesis is therefore that the effect of transparency is larger in countries which have a higher degree of electoral democracy in countries, that is, where public exposure of corruption may imply getting kicked out of office. Model 9 and 10 in table 2 give the results of the interactions between transparency and electoral democracy. Here we find a significant interaction effect only for Political Transparency (model 10). Increasing the opportunity for people of holding their government accountable does not affect at all the effect of Economic and Institutional Transparency on corruption(model 9). Given the different characteristics of the two types of transparency this is not unreasonable. As we noted earlier non-agent controlled transparency affects corruption by increasing the risks that actual instances of corruption are revealed. If there are accountability mechanisms in place the exposed actors will have to face the costs of being held accountable. Agent-controlled transparency, on the other hand, is less dependent on the accountability mechanism since the effect on corruption in that case is generated in the first place by decreasing opportunities for corruption. The interaction effect of electoral democracy and Political Transparency is only about one third of the size of the education interaction found earlier. It seems that Political Transparency is less dependent on electoral democracy than on newspaper circulation and, in particular, education for combating corruption. Since the Political Transparency index includes political competition as on of its composite components it is important to note that the robustness tests we have done indicate a somewhat stronger and more certain interaction effect in most specifications, in 18

19 particular those including press freedom as an indicia of non-agent controlled transparency. Without doubt, non-agent controlled transparency is more effective in systems where people can hold the leaders accountable in free elections. 14 Notable is the significant and positive coefficient for electoral democracy in model 10. It indicates that in countries with extremely low levels of transparency increasing the degree of electoral democracy would actually increase corruption. We will return to this finding in the next section. Plot A in figure 2 shows the marginal effect of Political Transparency for different levels of electoral democracy. In countries with no or very low levels of electoral democracy (less than 2) there is no significant negative effect of Political Transparency at all in this model. Finally, the last column of table 2 includes the interaction terms of both education which proved to be the strongest of the two publicity conditions and electoral democracy in the same model (model 11). Based on this model plots B-D in figure 4 illustrate the combined effect of the publicity and the accountability conditions. The three plots show the marginal effect of Political Transparency at different levels of electoral democracy for fixed levels of education low, medium and high respectively. At a low level of education (2 on the scale from 0 to 10, which is the level of Bangladesh and Kenya for example) Political Transparency has no significant effect on corruption regardless of the level of electoral democracy (the zero-line is encompassed within the confidence interval for all levels of electoral democracy in plot B). At West European levels of education, on the other hand (plot D), on the other hand, Political Transparency will have a negative effect even at minimum levels of free elections (in practice, of course, there will be few countries in this category). At an intermediate level of education (5 on the scale, plot C) Political Transparency will start to reduce corruption only at electoral democracy levels higher than four on the scale that. Although the precise magnitude of the marginal effect of Political Transparency is uncertain, as demonstrated by the large confidence intervals, the tendency with respect to the hypotheses tested here is clear: Increasing the 19

20 chances of publicity and accountability strengthens the power of transparency to reduce corruption. Returning to the example of Nigeria we can now conclude that the large effects on corruption of strengthening press freedom, as calculated by Brunetti and Weder, are not confirmed here. The level of electoral democracy in Nigeria was four on the scale (in 2003), which means that they would need an education level of five in order to start seeing significant negative effects of Political Transparency on corruption, as indicated in plot C of figure 2. We lack data on the level of education in Nigeria, but no other sub-saharan country except South Africa reaches that level in our data set. Furthermore the degree of newspaper circulation is very low in Nigeria (0.4). Thus, increasing transparency in Nigeria agent controlled or non-agent controlled without simultaneously introducing reforms focusing on education, media reach and electoral democracy, would probably do very little to reduce corruption. In a country like Romania, on the other hand, which is also plagued by a relatively high degree of corruption, but which has better preconditions for publicity (education 4.6, newspaper circulation 5.3) and accountability (electoral democracy 8), increasing transparency may have substantial effects. The same goes for several other European, Latin American and Asian countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Panama, Philippines, Thailand to name a few), while many African and Middle Eastern countries are lacking with respect to education and/or electoral democracy. Democracy and corruption So far we have considered electoral democracy as a control variable and an interaction variable in order to better understand the significance of transparency for corruption. But if we also look at the interaction effect between transparency and electoral democracy from the perspective of democracy, we may have an additional important finding here. Scholars so far have had much 20

21 difficulties straightening out the implications of democracy for corruption. Transparency and civil liberties more generally may be one answer to this puzzle. On the one hand, Lederman, Loayza & Reis Soares (2001) found a strong negative correlation between being currently a democracy and low levels of corruption. Ades and Di Tella (1999), on the other hand, failed to find any evidence of democracy leading to less corruption. On the contrary, although with some uncertainty, their data rather seemed to indicate the opposite. Sandholz and Koetzle (2000) found correlations with lower levels of corruption of both the current level of democracy and the number of years of democratic rule, but it was weaker and more uncertain than all the other variables they investigated (GDP/capita, state intervention in the economy, trade, colonial heritage and religion). Gerring and Thacker (2004), while leaving out authoritarian regimes and only looking at current democracies, found a weak but significant negative correlation between corruption and the number of years of democratic rule. One reason why the comparative research has produced contradictory and ambiguous results with respect to the link between democracy and corruption is probably that the relationship is non-linear, which makes it difficult to detect in the linear regressions that are usually employed. Montinola and Jackman (2002) have demonstrated such a non-linear correlation. Using a measure of the level of democracy as scaled from zero (least democratic) to ten (most democratic) they found a negative correlation starting at around seven on the scale. Corruption is typically a little higher in countries with intermediate levels of political competition than in their less democratic counterparts, but once past the threshold, higher levels of competition are associated with considerably less corruption (Montinola and Jackman 2002, 167; cf. Sung 2004). Montinola and Jackman s results may be compared with Treisman s, which indicated a threshold with respect to the effect of democracy on corruption over time. Significant negative correlations were found only after years. The fact that a country is democratic today 21

22 makes just about no difference to how corrupt it is perceived to be. What matters is whether or not it has been democratic for decades (Treisman 2000, 434). Thus, the correlation between democracy and corruption involves threshold effects, both with respect to the current level of democracy and to the degree of maturation, i.e. the number of years of democratic rule. However, so far scholars have not explained why. What is it that makes democracy shift from being a source of corruption to start becoming a remedy? Part of the explanation may be found in the second, but frequently omitted, component of the concept of democracy civil liberties. As noted earlier, previous research has equated democracy with free and fair elections. The interaction effect of electoral democracy and Political Transparency demonstrated here indicates that bringing civil liberties into the concept of democracy may give a different picture of democracy s effect on corruption. Just as transparency works better as a remedy against corruption if it is joined by an accountability mechanism electoral democracy may need transparency to affect elite behaviour. In fact, as seen in model 10 (table 2) in countries where there is no transparency at all democratisation only with respect to elections actually raises the level of corruption (holding the level of education and newspaper circulation constant). Although not shown here the marginal effect of electoral democracy only changes to positive at transparency levels of around six on the scale. 15 In order to further examine the argument that transparency may help countries get beyond the threshold we test a curvilinear model on our data, introducing transparency as a control variable in a second step. Model 12 in table 3 tests the assumption that there is a non-linear relationship between democracy and corruption in our data (with GDP as a basic control). The curvilinear term (Electoral dem^2) indicates the extent to which the effect of electoral democracy on corruption is dependent upon the level of electoral democracy. The fact that it is highly significant in model 12 is in line with the conclusions of previous research. More important here, however, is the change that occurs when Political Transparency is introduced in the 22

23 second model (model 13). The curvilinear term falls by almost two thirds and is no longer statistically significant. Political Transparency thus erases the curvilinearity of the model. 16 Although this may not be the whole story of the threshold effect it is probably an important part of it. Thus, one reason why partially and newly democratized countries often have a higher degree of corruption than mature and fully democratized countries is that there is a lack of media scrutiny on the political system in these countries. Even in cases where there are accountability institutions in place, in the form of general elections, the risk that corrupt activities will be exposed to the public is not high enough in these countries to prevent such activities. Conclusions This article has confirmed the common assertion that transparency may reduce corruption. This is so also when controlling for electoral democracy, which previous studies of press freedom and corruption have failed to do. However, it has also specified and qualified this assertion in several respects. One such specification is that there is an important distinction to be drawn between agent controlled and non-agent controlled transparency. Freedom of information laws and other transparency requirements which are implemented by the agent itself are less effective medicines against corruption compared to a free press. We have also demonstrated that looking only at the average effects gives a misleading picture of the significance of transparency for corruption. Transparency in itself is not enough. Just making information available will not prevent corruption if the conditions for publicity and accountability are weak. The interaction effects of transparency and education, newspaper circulation and electoral democracy demonstrate the conditionality of the link to corruption. One important implication of these findings with respect to current debates and research on transparency is that it may not be sufficient to concentrate on measures directed towards the 23

24 agent in order to obtain effects on agency behaviour. Reforms focusing on the principal itself, or on mediators between the agent and the principal, may be equally important. We can also conclude that transparency is no general quick fix for anti-corruption reformers. In countries with low levels of education and media reach and in semi-democratic political systems improvements with respect to transparency must be accompanied with additional reforms, strengthening the capacity of people to access and process information and execute sanctions, if they are to have any effect. Finally, we believe that we have at least the starting of an explanation for the puzzling findings of previous research with respect to democracy and corruption. What does it take to make democracy start hitting in on corruption? We argue that it is the interacting effect of having free and fair elections and a free press (or civil liberties more broadly) which gives the necessary kick. Corruption researchers must acknowledge that democracy is not just a question of elections. Only when we have in place a lively public sphere of educated people, where the risk for media scrutiny and bad publicity is always present, free and fair elections will start to reduce corruption. 24