EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No.45
 

Author

Fiona Yap is Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific. Her main research interests are in policy and political economy in East and Southeast Asia. Her research work is available through journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of East Asian Studies, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Korea Observer, and Australian Journal of Political Science, as well as chapter contributions in edited volumes. She is on the Advisory Board of the internationally-funded Korea Institute at the Australian National University, serves as co-editor of the journal Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, is on the editorial board of Korea Observer and the Asian Journal of Political Science, served as editor of Annual Editions: Comparative Politics for McGraw-Hill and is a reviewer for numerous journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspective, Governance, Asian Survey, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Journal of East Asian Studies. Prior to joining the ANU, she was a tenured-faculty at the University of Kansas.

Abstract

How do citizens respond to government corruption? Specifically, do citizens engage in collective action to demand government accountability for corruption? We consider that citizens’ strategic interactions underlie collective action and use experimental research to clarify conditions under which it occurs. The results show participants engage in collective action across various conditions, particularly: (a) when they lose from corrupt actions; and (b) when informed that others demand accountability. This paper makes three contributions: first, the findings highlight conditions under a theoretical model, the stag-hunt, predicts collective action to underpin social action. Second, relatedly, the results clarify the effects of two critical conditions – loss from corruption and information about other participants’ behaviors – that consistently motivate respondents to pursue collective action. The finding of information is highly relevant, given the increasing interconnections through social media. Third, the findings provide evidence-based research across a range of regime-types and cultures to fill a huge gap in policy understanding, and carry substantial implications for domestic and international policymaking, policy reforms, and political and social stability.

“CORRUPTION is public enemy number 1,” the President of the World Bank, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, proclaimed, as he launched the reorganization of the institution – the first in almost 20 years – to dedicate a new department for tackling corruption (World Bank press release, December 19, 2013). Do citizens respond as vehemently against corruption in the government? In particular, are citizens galvanized into collective action to form “the necessary political will” to stamp government corruption (Grey and Kaufmann 1998:9)? When citizens act in concert, their demands are not easily discounted: in particular, the collective action surmounts free-ridership problems that weaken the credibility of citizens’ demands. Equally important, citizens’ collective action against corruption may be highly potent, as the 2013-2014 protests in Thailand and the Ukraine, and across the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea in 2012-2014 show. Indeed, a growing literature points out governments, even those of less-democratic countries, will accommodate citizens’ credible demands for accountability to remain in office (Haggard and Kaufman 1997; Gang 2007; Mason and Clements 2002; Robinson 2006; Howard and Roessler 2006; Yap 2005; Gandhi 2008). Clearly, citizens’ demand for government accountability of corruption – particularly in the form of collective action – is a significant complement to the fight against corruption and highly pertinent to political, social, and economic developments and stability. It is surprising, then, that studies note the large literature on corruption has overlooked citizens’ demands, perhaps expecting formidable coordination is required for collective action (Tucker 2007; Chang et al 2010; Anduiza et al 2013; Manzetti and Wilson 2007).

This project provides a theoretical framework that shows such coordination is achievable; further, it uses experimental study to clarify the conditions under which citizens act in concert to demand government accountability of corruption. Corruption refers broadly to the failure of the government to exercise impartiality of authority (Andersson and Heywood 2009: 748-751; Rothstein and Teorell 2008; Kurer 2005). This conception underscores the general agreement within and across societies on what counts as corruption, and it includes “particularistic practices such as clientelism and patronage” (Linde 2011: 413; Rothsten and Teorell 2008; Kurer 2005). It may also underlie the global ignition of citizens’ collective action against government corruption. In general, citizens’ demand for government accountability of corruption occurs when citizens withdraw support from the government – such as through protests, demonstrations, or electoral setbacks – to penalize the government or demand recourse over corruption. The term citizens denote non-government voters who are resource-owners, i.e., it includes labor, the middle-class, farmers, investors, and opposition groups.

Specifically, we draw on the stag-hunt theoretical framework, which captures a conflict between “considerations of mutual benefit and . . . personal risk” (Skyrms 2001: 3), to evaluate for conditions under which citizens coordinate successfully. Thus, we consider that citizens’ collective action to demand government accountability for corruption is based on strategic interactions with other citizens. Strategic interaction treats players’ choices to achieve political, social, or economic goals as subject to the constraints of each other’s preferences and behaviors and the structure of the game (Jackman and Miller 1996; Bates et al 1998; Mason and Clements 2002; Guo 2007). This strategic interaction treatment, then, is an alternative to decision-theory perspective; the latter treats players’ behaviors as motivated primarily by their own preferences and wants. Importantly, the stag-hunt set-up – described in detail in section 2 – has two equilibria: one where all hunt stag (the payoff-dominant strategy), and another where all hunt hare (the risk-dominant strategy). By the stag-hunt set-up, then, citizens may coordinate successfully for the payoff-dominant equilibrium. This contrasts against the coordination failure typified by the prisoner’s dilemma, which reveals “a conflict between individual rationality and mutual benefit” (Skyrms 2001: 3). That is, under the prisoner’s dilemma, the individual benefits more by choosing to not act even though the aggregation of such individual choices is socially, economically, and politically detrimental. As a result, the equilibrium outcome under the prisoner’s dilemma is that citizens act in self-interest and do not undertake the costs of demanding for punishment; in the aggregate, citizens’ demands are weakened and not credible.

Methodologically, we assess for four critical conditions – the effects of information, penalties-rewards, how corruption affects payoffs, and costs of making the demand – that lead to the stag-hunt payoff-dominant outcome, using experiments in Australia, Singapore, and the United States (US). The countries are ideal for study in four ways. First, the countries vary widely on the individualism-collectivism scale. Thus, for instance, Hofstede et al (2010) provides a score of 91 and 90 for the US and Australia respectively (on a 1-120 individualism-collectivism scale) to denote that individualism is very high in these countries; in contrast, Singapore has a score of 20 on the same scale. Scores on the individualist end of the spectrum generally indicate disinclination to engage in collective action, as opposed to scores on individualist end. The extent to which the results hew to this individualist-collectivist spectrum, then, provides important insights into citizens’ demand. Second, the comparison spans a mix of cultures: Eastern-dominant (Singapore) and Western-dominant (the United States and Australia) ones. Studies note that corruption erodes citizens’ trust even in countries with norms of gift-giving, such as in East and Southeast Asia (Chang and Chu 2006; Kang 2002; Seligson 2002; Treisman 2000; Anderson and Tverdova 2003). The assessment here, then, provides useful information across cultures to fill the gaps in understanding. Third, the countries also vary with regards to regime types: mature democracies and one-party dominant rule. Citizens’ responses may be influenced by the regime-types; this study, then, provides important information about citizens’ collective action for government accountability in relation to regime-types. Fourth, there is variance between the countries in terms of public sector corruption; for instance, popular indices for capturing public sector corruption – such as the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index – report that Singapore and Australia have low levels of public sector corruption (86 and 81, respectively, on a 100-scale in 2013) while US falls in the middling range (73 in 2013). Here, again, the results will provide information on consistency of citizens’ responses across different levels of public sector corruption. Experiments are particularly useful: they fill in for the lack of variation, controls, or substantive overlap that exists empirically to analytically separate simultaneity and interrelationships (Azfar and Nelson 2007; Olken 2007; Ostrom et al 1994; Duch et al 2010; Goodin et al 2007). Experiments, then, are useful in this study since the “treatment” may be controlled to evaluate its effect on citizens’ response whereas in real world observations, citizens’ response may be inextricable from treatment...(Continued)