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Civil Liberties, Democracy, and the Performance of Government Projects
Abstract
This article uses a cross-national data set on the performance of government investment projects financed by the World Bank to examine the link between government efficacy and governance. It demonstrates a strong empirical link between civil liberties and the performance of government of projects. Even after controlling for other determinants of performance, countries with the strongest civil liberties have projects with an economic rate of return 8–22 percentage points higher than countries with the weakest civil liberties. The strong effect of civil liberties holds true even when controlling for the level of democracy. The interrelationship among civil liberties, civil strife, and project performance suggests that the possible mechanism of causation is from more civil liberties to increased citizen voice to better projects. This result adds to the evidence for the view that increasing citizen voice and public accountability—through both participation and better governance—can lead to greater efficacy in government action.
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Citations
Cites
The Forgotten Rationale for Policy Reform: The Productivity of Investment Projects
Isham, J., & Kaufmann, D. (1999) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/003355399555972 · Cited by 191
Self-citation
Cited by
Institutions for high-quality growth: What they are and how to acquire them
Rodrik, D. (2000) · Studies in Comparative International Development · doi:10.1007/bf02699764 · Cited by 1,020
Bhattarai, M., & Hammig, M. (2001) · World Development · doi:10.1016/s0305-750x(01)00019-5 · Cited by 570
Leviathan’s Latent Dimensions: Measuring State Capacity for Comparative Political Research
Hanson, J. K., & Sigman, R. (2021) · The Journal of Politics · doi:10.1086/715066 · Cited by 414
The Forgotten Rationale for Policy Reform: The Productivity of Investment Projects
Isham, J., & Kaufmann, D. (1999) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/003355399555972 · Cited by 191
Self-citationGovernance, economic policy, and the environmental Kuznets curve for natural tropical forests
BHATTARAI, M., & HAMMIG, M. (2004) · Environment and Development Economics · doi:10.1017/s1355770x03001293 · Cited by 182
Metadata
- Authors
- Isham, J., Kaufmann, D., & Pritchett, L. H.
- Venue
- The World Bank Economic Review
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1997-05-01
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 219-242
- ISSN
- 0258-6770 (ISSN-L)
- 1564-698X
- OpenAlex
- W2116144235
- Cited by
- 398
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 32.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Isham, J., Kaufmann, D., & Pritchett, L. H. (1997). Civil Liberties, Democracy, and the Performance of Government Projects. The World Bank Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/11.2.219
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
