Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia

Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual-level evaluations of the degree to which decentraliz...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican journal of political science Vol. 58; no. 1; pp. 175 - 188
Main Authors Escobar-Lemmon, Maria, Ross, Ashley D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2014
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects
Accountability
Citizens
Colombia
Cynicism
Decentralization
Democracy
Departments
Government
Government corruption
Government departments
Government officials
Incentives
Local government
Political attitudes
Political corruption
Political elections
Political freedom
Political Participation
Political science
Politicians
Public opinion
Studies
Trust
Colombia
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Summary:Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual-level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.
Bibliography:ArticleID:AJPS12043
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http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/faces/study/StudyPage.xhtml?globalId=hdl:1902.1/21236&versionNumber=1
Kim Yi Dionne, Tulia Falleti, Kim Q. Hill, Marisa Kellam, Paul Kellstedt, and Michelle Taylor‐Robinson as well as the journal's anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments on this article. Previous versions were presented at the (2011) annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and the (2011) annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, where we also received helpful comments and suggestions. The staff at LAPOP and especially Juan Carlos Rodríguez Raga provided useful information about the LAPOP data. We are also grateful to Leopoldo Fergusson for help in obtaining the fiscal decentralization data. All errors and omissions are nonetheless our own. All data and replication files can be found at
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ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/ajps.12043