Power-sharing in governments, clarity of responsibility, and the control of corruption

ABSTRACT How does power-sharing in governments influence the control of corruption in Asia Pacific democracies? Studies find that voters can more easily hold elected officials accountable, providing them with incentives to control corruption, if levels of clarity of responsibility are sufficiently high. Most of these studies have focused on European countries, and have tended to measure power-sharing, which lowers clarity of responsibility, in terms of coalition governments. The wide variation in institutional arrangements across the democracies in the Asia Pacific region calls for a more nuanced evaluation of the conditions under which we should expect to find clarity of responsibility. Using original data on government characteristics in 19 Asia Pacific democracies from 1996 to 2019 and data on control of corruption from the World Bank, I find that higher levels of clarity of responsibility, captured by presidentialism and a higher share of decision-making power held by the head of government’s party, promote higher levels of corruption control.