Do individual disclosure rules for parliamentarians improve government effectiveness?

• Published in: Economics of governance Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. 301 - 324
• Main Authors: van Aaken, Anne, Voigt, Stefan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.12.2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attorneys; Campaign contributions; Citizens; Corruption; Corruption in government; Debates; Disclosure; Economic rent; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Economics; Economics and Finance; Effectiveness; Elections; Ethics; International Political Economy; Lawyers; Legislative Bodies; Negative campaigning; Original Paper; Parliamentary elections-UK; Parliaments; Political Theory; Politicians; Politics; Privacy; Public Administration; Public Finance; Rent-Seeking; Studies; Trust; United Kingdom > UK; Money in politics; Political financing; K49; K19; Individual disclosure rules; Socioeconomic composition of parliament; D02; Legislative codes of conduct; Z13; D72; Transparency and disclosure
• ISSN: 1435-6104; 1435-8131
• DOI: 10.1007/s10101-011-0100-8

The pros and cons of stricter disclosure rules for parliamentarians are hotly debated. Some argue that disclosure rules for parliamentarians increase transparency of the legislative branch, leading to lower levels of rent-seeking and corruption, increased citizen trust in parliament, and better quality of law-making. Others argue that disclosure rules endanger the privacy of parliamentarians, that their introduction would stop businesspeople and lawyers from running for seats, which would decrease the quality of law-making. This is the first attempt to empirically test these conjectures on the composition of parliament empirically. We find that the introduction of disclosure rules is usually not accompanied by a significant shift in the proportion of lawyers and businesspeople in parliament.