TUNESS Chart of the Week (06/17/2013)
As the final draft of the Tunisian constitution moves to the plenary session for discussion and final vote, we review this week one of the main controversial issue widely debated within the legislative branch and the civil society. What kind of prerogatives this new constitution should grant to the Executive head and to what extent his power should be counterbalanced by the legislative body? An extensive debate took place in the country over the last two years. The recent memories from the former totalitarian regime that governed the country have substantially shaped this debate. Not surprising to find that the consensus was rapidly reached among major political players that there should be no more unconstrained power granted to one person or one party in the absence of a solidly rooted checks and balances. Despite this consensus, the compromise on the demarcation of the political power of each branch is still to come. In this note, we review the question of the “optimal” split of power between the presidential and the legislative institutions fromone particular angle.
Our objective is to try to untangle the causal effect that may exist between the degree of constraints on the powers of the executive chief and one of the major problem facing the country today that’s the widely spread corruption practices. The question we’re asking in this note is quite simple. What type of political regime will ensure the most efficient strategy to curb this kind of unlawful practices? While no crystal clear answer can be advanced from either the political science or economics literature, we propose to run a simple model which correlates the severity level of the corruption in a given country with the degree of fractionalization of the legislative body and the constitutional constraints imposed on the chief executive. We analyze recent data from 140 countries compiled into three main indicators; (a) corruption index prepared by Transparency International and focuses on the corruption in the public sector. Generally, this index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain with an emphasis, for example on bribe-taking by public officials in public procurement. This index is constructed on a 10 level scale with 10 reflecting countries with the highest level of corruption; (b) Executive constraints constructed as a 7 category scale where 1 reflects an unlimited authority (no regular limitations) for the executive's actions and 7 describing the cases where there is a total executive parity or subordination between various branches of powers; (c) Legislative Fractionalization is simply calculated as the probability that two random draws from the lower legislative chamber (parliament) will be from different parties. In other words a higher value of this indicator should signal the presence of multiple political parties in the parliament and vice-versa.
The chat above confirms the theoretical conclusions found in the relevant literature that the design of political institutions and balance of powers do matter when it comes to fighting corruption. In this regard, Lederman et al. (2005) ascertain that:“the problem of corruption in the public sphere is almost a direct consequence of the nature of government interventions”. According to the authors, the design of the political institutions tend to impact the corruption through two main channels : (a) The political accountability through which individual regardless of its rank in the society or in the political arena is held accountable for any unlawful crime he or she may commit in the exercise of the official function; (b) The structure of provision of public goods which tends to reduce any incentive for bribery when the environment of the public contract selection for instance is highly competitive. As can be seen in our chart, countries that exhibit the highest corruption score (red area in the chart) appear to be those where powers seem to be concentrated in the hands of one person or one single party (Executive constraints variable equals to 1 and 2). This situation seems to hold for all countries in this category regardless of the degree of fractionalization of the legislative body. The above finding confirms Breen and Gillanders’ (2010, 17) conclusion that:“Autocratic states tend towards less transparent government and political decision making which leaves much more room for corruption”. Conversely, corruption levels are the lowest in the countries where a strong balance of power and split of authorities ensure a great deal of discipline within the government body (blue area). In those countries, the presence of checks and balances mechanisms allows for an immediate monitoring of the executive by the legislature and thus reduces any incentive the former might have to abuse the power he was vested with. Moreover, this oversight power becomes more pronounced, according to the chart above, as the number of the parliamentary blocks increases since strong and active opposition is very often expected to play a key role in unveiling any misbehavior of the executive branch.
Overall, the present work confirms the theoretical conclusion found in the literature. We argued that a political system based on the dominance of the one person or one party remains more prone to corruption practices. This result seems to be consistent across all countries and regions of the world. This note should provide an additional empirical support to our lawmakers in Tunisia to favor a political system drawing on more balanced powers and more importantly to design strong constitutional institutions that guarantee, the highest levels of accountability at all political levels.
References:
Breen, M., and Gillanders, R. (2012) : “Corruption, Institutions and Regulations”, Economics of Governance, Vol 13(3), pp.263-285
Lederman, D. Laoyza, N and Soares, R., (2005) :”Accountability and Corruption: political Institutions Matter.” Economics and Politics 17(1), 1-35.