Calculating Corruption: Political Competition and Bribery Under Authoritarianism
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Calculating Corruption: Political Competition and Bribery under Authoritarianism Noah Matthew Buckley Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 c 2017 Noah Matthew Buckley-Farlee All rights reserved ABSTRACT Calculating Corruption: Political Competition and Bribery under Authoritarianism Noah Matthew Buckley Why do some authoritarian regimes exhibit high levels of corruption, while others produce very little? In this study, I show how corruption is used as a signal of performance and loyalty in autocratic regimes. I find that elites in non-democratic regimes reduce corruption in the face of political competitiveness. I test this theory using extensive micro-level data on the public’s experiences with bribery in contemporary Russia. This data set is comprised of over 180,000 responses to public opinion surveys from 2001-2016 in Russia’s subnational units. Identification of the causal effect of political competition on corruption is achieved with the use of an exogenously-determined electoral calendar—I show how the scheduled end of a term in office is an exogenous positive shock to political competition for authoritarian leaders in Russian regions, a shock that decreases experienced bribery by over 13% in those years. A wide array of alternative measures including novel search engine data and crime statistics support my conclusions. I also show that governors’ tenuous hold on their positions— all the more tenuous when in their final years of a term in office—can be bolstered by additional resources that may be at their disposal. By showing how shocks to political competition drive governors to reduce corruption levels for fear of losing their jobs, but also that those shocks have varying effects for different governors, I illustrate the power of a dissatisfied public and authoritarian formal rules to shape behavior in non-democratic regimes. I also examine the linking assumption between public dissatisfaction and corruption experiences. These findings have implications for our understanding of autocratic politics, corruption, and studies of Russia. I show that corruption in authoritarian regimes is not a byproduct of authoritarianism, nor is it merely a result of low capacity—it is also a means of rule and control for autocrats. Modern authoritarian rulers are more discriminating in their application of petty corruption than is commonly understood. Finally, I employ and extend multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) to generate descriptive estimates of corruption as experienced by the public with much greater accuracy and precision than has been possible previously. Contents List of Figures vi List of Tables viii 1 Introduction1 1.1 Defining Corruption............................... 13 1.2 Why Study Petty Corruption?.......................... 14 1.3 Why Russia?................................... 16 1.4 Plan of the Dissertation............................. 18 2 Theory: Corruption and Autocratic Stability 20 2.1 Existing Literature................................ 22 2.2 Governors and Autocrats............................. 28 2.2.1 Unpopularity and Unrest......................... 32 2.3 Governors’ Levers................................. 35 2.4 What Is Political Competitiveness?....................... 37 2.5 Attention and Monitoring............................ 40 i 2.6 Selection Mechanisms in Russia......................... 43 2.7 Empirical Implications and Scope Conditions.................. 45 3 Measuring Corruption: Experiences and Surveys 48 3.1 Existing Approaches............................... 49 3.2 My Data...................................... 51 3.3 Missing Data and Non-Response......................... 57 3.3.1 Item Non-Response............................ 59 3.4 Sensitive Question Bias.............................. 59 3.5 Corruption: Perceived, Experienced, High-Level, Low-Level.......... 66 3.6 Describing Petty Corruption in Russia..................... 67 3.6.1 Who Gives Bribes?............................ 68 3.6.2 What are Bribes Like?.......................... 70 3.6.3 To Whom are Bribes Given?....................... 73 3.6.4 How do Russians Feel about Bribery, Bribe-Givers, and Bribe-Takers? 75 3.6.5 Comparing Russian Bribery to Post-Communist Bribery....... 78 3.7 Conclusion..................................... 81 4 Political Competition and Corruption: Empirical Evidence 83 4.1 Research Design.................................. 84 4.1.1 Measuring Competition: Scheduled End of Term............ 85 4.1.2 Statistical Modeling........................... 89 4.2 Results: Effect of Political Competition on Corruption............ 91 ii 4.2.1 Interpretation............................... 97 4.3 Robustness.................................... 99 4.3.1 Controlling for Attitudes......................... 100 4.3.2 Modeling................................. 102 4.4 Alternative Measures............................... 104 4.4.1 Alternative Measures of Competition.................. 104 4.4.2 Results with Alternative Measures of Political Competition...... 107 4.4.3 Measuring Corruption Using Web Search Data............. 108 4.4.4 Law Enforcement Data.......................... 113 4.5 Conclusion..................................... 115 5 Resources and Strength: Exploring Conditional Effects 117 5.1 Identification................................... 118 5.2 Theoretical Expectations............................. 119 5.3 Regression Analysis................................ 121 5.4 Robustness.................................... 128 5.5 Summary and Discussion............................. 129 6 Autocrats, Governors, and the Risk of Public Unrest 132 6.1 Empirical Approach................................ 137 6.1.1 Data and Research Design........................ 139 6.1.2 Causal Identification........................... 140 6.2 Effects of Corruption on Individual Attitudes................. 142 iii 6.2.1 Reactions to Corruption Experiences.................. 143 6.2.2 Effects on Protest............................. 146 6.2.3 Effects on Trust and Satisfaction.................... 148 6.3 Effect of End of Term Conditional on Governor Popularity.......... 151 6.4 Focus of Corruption Reduction on Likely Protesters.............. 153 6.5 Conclusion..................................... 155 7 Improving Corruption Measurement with MRP 159 7.1 Data and Design................................. 162 7.1.1 Russian Census Data........................... 163 7.2 Pooled MRP.................................... 164 7.2.1 The MRP Response Model........................ 164 7.2.2 Post-stratification............................. 166 7.2.3 MRP Estimates.............................. 167 7.3 Extending MRP.................................. 167 7.3.1 Uncertainty and MRP Estimation.................... 168 7.3.2 Adjusting MRP Estimates Using List Experiments.......... 171 7.3.3 Simulation MRP for Testing and Prediction.............. 174 7.4 MRP on Firms.................................. 177 7.5 Conclusion..................................... 179 8 Conclusion 185 8.1 Goals of the Dissertation and Empirical Findings............... 187 iv 8.2 Implications and Future Research........................ 191 9 Bibliography 195 10 Appendix 207 10.1 Survey Data Used................................. 207 10.2 Regional Data Used................................ 209 10.3 Additional Analyses................................ 210 List of Figures 1.1 Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Corruption.................4 3.1 Authoritarian Corruption and Individual Demographic Characteristics.... 58 3.2 Histograms of List Experiment Responses................... 64 3.3 Map of Petrov Corruption Component..................... 66 3.4 Map of TI Corruption Assessment........................ 67 3.5 Bribe Size..................................... 71 3.6 Bribe Size (TI 2002)............................... 72 3.7 Regional Variation in Bribe-Takers....................... 75 3.8 Country Average Bribery, LiTS......................... 79 3.9 Russian Corruption in Relation to other Post-Communist Corruption, LiTS. 81 4.1 Balance of Region-Years With and Without a Scheduled End of Term.... 88 4.2 Determinants of Corruption Experiences: Scheduled End of Term and Demo- graphics...................................... 93 4.3 Regime Competitiveness by Region, 2010.................... 106 4.4 Yandex Wordstat Interface............................ 109 vi 4.5 Example of Over Time Variation in Searches, Russia averages........ 111 7.1 Census Education and Age by Region...................... 163 7.2 Map of MRP Corruption Estimates (2011)................... 168 7.4 MRP Estimates with Uncertainty........................ 170 7.5 Histograms of List Experiment Responses................... 173 7.6 Simulation MRP................................. 176 7.3 MRP Estimates of Avg. Regional Experienced Petty Corruption in Russia (2011)....................................... 181 7.7 Firm Characteristics in Firm Census, by Region................ 182 7.8 Firm Characteristics in Firm Census, by Region................ 183 7.9 Number of Firms in Pseudo-Census and Rosstat, by Region......... 183 7.10 Map of Firm MRP Corruption Estimates (2012)................ 184 A1 Correlation Matrix of Individual-level Variables................ 208 vii List of Tables 3.1 Summary of Survey Data............................. 53 3.2 Region-Year Sample Size (part 1 of 2)...................... 54 3.3 Region-Year Sample Size (part 2 of 2)...................... 55 3.4