Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: An Experimental Study of Bribery, Nepotism, and Patronage

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。腐败是阻碍经济发展的最常见因素之一。它阻碍了政治和经济增长，降低了社会福利，加剧了收入不平等，并降低了对政治机构的信任。即使有了反腐败政策，腐败的阴影仍然很大。反腐败政策的关键挑战是创造可持续的变革。除了政策本身的变化，公民必须确信政策干预的有效性。这意味着要改变公民身份？对政府和官僚机构腐败程度的看法。先前的研究表明，反腐败政策的成功高度依赖于底层文化；同样的政策可能在一种文化环境中成功，但在另一种文化环境中失败。如果反腐败政策措施失败，那么腐败可能被视为一个无法解决的问题。这使得各国的反腐败政策的试错法非常危险，并突出了打击腐败的一个重要问题：政策需要具有很高的有效性概率，各国才会冒险实施，但却没有地方可以对其进行测试。在这项提议中，研究人员使用实验室实验来“测试”不同的反腐败政策。他们提出的问题是，与腐败相对较少的社会相比，在腐败程度普遍较高的社会，政策干预如何改变个人行为。拟议的实验调查了三种不同类型的腐败（贿赂、裙带关系和赞助）和三种不同的政策干预（制裁、增强公民意识和提高透明度），实验对象来自两种不同的文化（腐败现象非常低的美国和腐败现象普遍的巴基斯坦）。拟议的实验使我们能够在不考虑在社会规模上实施相关风险的情况下，调查每种文化中反腐败政策的影响。这项研究的目标是证明这些政策如何（以及何时）可能在低成本和低后果的环境中有效。研究结果将为发展机构制定针对特定当地人口的政策提供指导。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Corruption is one of most cited factors inhibiting economic development. It impedes political and economic growth, reduces the welfare of societies, increases income inequality, and reduces trust in political institutions. Even in the presence of anticorruption policies, the shadow of corruption looms large. The key challenge in anticorruption policy is to create sustainable change. In addition to the change in policy itself, citizens must be convinced of the effectiveness of the policy intervention. This implies altering citizens? beliefs about the level of corruption within governments and bureaucracies. Previous work has suggested that the success of anticorruption policy is highly dependent on underlying culture; the same policies can succeed in one cultural environment but fail in another. If anticorruption policy measures fail, corruption may then be viewed as a problem that cannot be addressed. This makes the trial and error method of anticorruption policy very risky for countries, and highlights an important problem in fighting corruption: policies need to have a high probability of effectiveness before countries will risk implementation, yet there is no venue where they can be tested.In this proposal, the researchers use laboratory experiments to 'testbed' alternative anticorruption policies. They ask how policy interventions change individual behavior in societies where high levels of corruption are prevalent, as compared with societies where corruption is relatively rare. The proposed experiments investigate three different types of corruption (bribery, nepotism, and patronage) and three different policy interventions (sanctions, enhanced civic awareness, and improved transparency), with subjects in two different cultures (the US, where corruption is very low, and Pakistan, where it is widespread). The proposed experiments allow us to investigate the impact of anticorruption policies in each culture without the risks associated with implementation on a societal scale. The goal of the research is to demonstrate how (and when) these policies are likely to be effective in an inexpensive and low-consequence environment. The results will provide guidance for development agencies in formulating policies targeted towards a particular local population.