Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies
Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies
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DOI：
10.1017/s0007123416000478
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发表时间：
2017-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
J. Esarey;Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Esarey;Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
在21世纪之交，一对重要的研究表明，妇女在政府中的任职人数越多，政府中的腐败程度就越低。但最近的研究发现，这种关系并不普遍，并质疑它为什么存在。本文提出了一个新的理论，解释为什么妇女的代表性只是有时与较低的腐败水平，并提供证据支持这一理论。研究发现，当腐败行为被选民发现和惩罚的风险很高时，换句话说，当官员可以被追究选举责任时，妇女代表与腐败的联系最强。这一理论的基础有两个主要机制：先前的证据表明（1）女性比男性更厌恶风险;（2）选民在民意调查中对女性提出了更高的标准。这表明，腐败行为的性别差异与选举问责制的强度成正比。因此，这些假设预测，在选举问责制度高的民主国家，妇女代表人数增加与腐败程度降低之间的经验关系将最为强烈，具体而言：（1）腐败不是常态，（2）新闻自由得到尊重，（3）议会制度和（4）个人主义选举规则。本文提出的观察证据表明，选举问责制缓和妇女的代表性和腐败之间的联系，在一个时间序列，截面数据集的76个民主倾向的国家。
At the turn of the twenty-first century, an important pair of studies established that greater female representation in government is associated with lower levels of perceived corruption in that government. But recent research finds that this relationship is not universal and questions why it exists. This article presents a new theory explaining why women’s representation is only sometimes related to lower corruption levels and provides evidence in support of that theory. The study finds that the women’s representation–corruption link is strongest when the risk of corruption being detected and punished by voters is high – in other words, when officials can be held electorally accountable. Two primary mechanisms underlie this theory: prior evidence shows that (1) women are more risk-averse than men and (2) voters hold women to a higher standard at the polls. This suggests that gender differences in corrupt behavior are proportional to the strength of electoral accountability. Consequently, the hypotheses predict that the empirical relationship between greater women’s representation and lower perceived corruption will be strongest in democracies with high electoral accountability, specifically: (1) where corruption is not the norm, (2) where press freedom is respected, (3) in parliamentary systems and (4) under personalistic electoral rules. The article presents observational evidence that electoral accountability moderates the link between women’s representation and corruption in a time-series, cross-sectional dataset of seventy-six democratic-leaning countries.