Eric C C Chang
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534548 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric C C Chang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric C C |
| FAMILY NAME | Chang |
| SIGNATURE | CHANG E C C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2610-2422 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 870 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The Choice of Electoral Systems in Electoral Autocracies
This article develops a theory to account for the variation in electoral systems in electoral authoritarian regimes. We argue that resource-rich dictators are incentivized to employ proportional representation systems to alleviate the threat from the masses and pre-empt the emergence of new opposition, while resource-poor dictators tend to choose majoritarian systems to co-opt ruling elites in the legislature. Using cross-national data on elector…
Autocracy and human capital
Corruption predictability and corruption voting in Asian democracies
An Insider–Outsider Theory of Popular Tolerance for Corrupt Politicians
This article addresses the puzzle of electoral support for corrupt politicians in emerging democracies by examining citizens’ varying attitudes toward political corruption. We make an important theoretical distinction between perceptions of and tolerance for corruption, and argue that these different attitudes vary across individuals depending on whether they are political insiders or outsiders. We test our theory using Afrobarometer survey data …
Jong-sung You, Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared
Over the years much ink has been spilt asserting that democracy and economic growth reduce corruption. Indeed, conventional wisdom holds that weakened democratic institutions and poor economic deve
Preferential Trade Agreements, Income Inequality, and Authoritarian Survival
This paper investigates the political and economic consequences of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in authoritarian countries. Based on the Heckscher –Ohlin model of international trade and theories of inequality and regime transition, this paper argues that dictators sign PTAs as a means of consolidating their authoritarian rule. Specifically, PTAs help dictators reduce economic inequality by enriching poor laborers and thereby atte…
Economic inequality, winner-loser gap, and satisfaction with democracy
Sources of Corruption in Authoritarian Regimes
Objectives. We seek to investigate the determinants of corruption in authoritarian polities. We hypothesize that corruption in nondemocratic settings will be greater where the ruling group is personalistic rather than a political party or a military clique and that it will be greater where rulers expect to remain in power longer. We construct a new operationalization of the selectorate theory advanced by Bueno de Mesquita et al. Methods. We use c…
Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability
Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity from deputies suspected of criminal wrongdoing, the authors analyze the political careers of members of the Chamber during the first eleven postwar legislatures (1948–94). They find that judicial investigation typically did not discourage deputies from s…
Electoral Incentives and Budgetary Spending: Rethinking the Role of Political Institutions
This paper reconciles the long-standing debate on electorally motivated government spending by embedding politicians’ electoral incentives in political institutions. Using budgetary spending data from 21 OECD countries from 1973 to 2000, this paper shows that electoral budgetary cycles take the form of higher district-specific spending under single-member district systems and higher social welfare spending under proportional representation system…
Electoral Systems and Real Prices: Panel Evidence for the OECD Countries, 1970–2000
In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and vote…
Electoral Systems, District Magnitude and Corruption
The relationship between electoral systems and corruption in a large sample of contemporary democratic nations is analysed in this article. Whereas previous studies have shown that closed-list proportional representation is associated with greater (perceived) corruption than open-list PR, it is demonstrated here that this relationship fails to hold once district magnitude is considered. The theory underlying this study draws on work on ‘the perso…
Corruption and Trust: Exceptionalism in Asian Democracies
While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the nega…
State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Forwards, Backwards, or Together
Across sub-Saharan Africa, new democracies emerge only in the context of relatively effective states. Using aggregate indicators of democracy and governance plus new public opinion data, the authors show which aspects of state building are most important. The scope of state infrastructure and the delivery of welfare services have little impact on democratization. But the establishment of a rule of law—as experienced through improvements in person…
Electoral Incentives for Political Corruption under Open-List Proportional Representation
Despite the considerable attention paid to the aggregate-level determinants of political corruption, until recently little empirical work has attempted to understand what systematic factors drive individual politicians to corruption. To reduce this gap, this paper hypothesizes that under open-list proportional representation in which personal votes are expensive yet critical for politicians to win election, politicians' electoral uncertainty rega…
Veto players and the structure of budgets in advanced industrialized countries
This article tests expectations generated by the veto players theory with respect to the over time composition of budgets in a multidimensional policy space. The theory predicts that countries with many veto players (i.e., coalition governments, bicameral political systems, presidents with veto) will have difficulty altering the budget structures. In addition, countries that tend to make significant shifts in government composition will have comm…
Competitive Corruption: Factional Conflict and Political Malfeasance in Postwar Italian Christian Democracy
This article studies the relationship between cartels of politicians and systemic political corruption in a democratic setting. Some electoral systems, including open-list systems of proportional representation, encourage intraparty competition for office. The authors analyze the relationship between intraparty conflict in postwar Italy's dominant political party, the Christian Democrats, and charges of malfeasance against Christian Democratic me…
Corruption and Trust: Exceptionalism in Asian Democracies
While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the nega…
Electoral Systems, District Magnitude and Corruption
The relationship between electoral systems and corruption in a large sample of contemporary democratic nations is analysed in this article. Whereas previous studies have shown that closed-list proportional representation is associated with greater (perceived) corruption than open-list PR, it is demonstrated here that this relationship fails to hold once district magnitude is considered. The theory underlying this study draws on work on ‘the perso…
Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability
Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity from deputies suspected of criminal wrongdoing, the authors analyze the political careers of members of the Chamber during the first eleven postwar legislatures (1948–94). They find that judicial investigation typically did not discourage deputies from s…
Competitive Corruption: Factional Conflict and Political Malfeasance in Postwar Italian Christian Democracy
This article studies the relationship between cartels of politicians and systemic political corruption in a democratic setting. Some electoral systems, including open-list systems of proportional representation, encourage intraparty competition for office. The authors analyze the relationship between intraparty conflict in postwar Italy's dominant political party, the Christian Democrats, and charges of malfeasance against Christian Democratic me…
Electoral Incentives for Political Corruption under Open-List Proportional Representation
Despite the considerable attention paid to the aggregate-level determinants of political corruption, until recently little empirical work has attempted to understand what systematic factors drive individual politicians to corruption. To reduce this gap, this paper hypothesizes that under open-list proportional representation in which personal votes are expensive yet critical for politicians to win election, politicians' electoral uncertainty rega…
Veto players and the structure of budgets in advanced industrialized countries
This article tests expectations generated by the veto players theory with respect to the over time composition of budgets in a multidimensional policy space. The theory predicts that countries with many veto players (i.e., coalition governments, bicameral political systems, presidents with veto) will have difficulty altering the budget structures. In addition, countries that tend to make significant shifts in government composition will have comm…
State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Forwards, Backwards, or Together
Across sub-Saharan Africa, new democracies emerge only in the context of relatively effective states. Using aggregate indicators of democracy and governance plus new public opinion data, the authors show which aspects of state building are most important. The scope of state infrastructure and the delivery of welfare services have little impact on democratization. But the establishment of a rule of law—as experienced through improvements in person…
An Insider–Outsider Theory of Popular Tolerance for Corrupt Politicians
This article addresses the puzzle of electoral support for corrupt politicians in emerging democracies by examining citizens’ varying attitudes toward political corruption. We make an important theoretical distinction between perceptions of and tolerance for corruption, and argue that these different attitudes vary across individuals depending on whether they are political insiders or outsiders. We test our theory using Afrobarometer survey data …
Economic inequality, winner-loser gap, and satisfaction with democracy
Electoral Incentives and Budgetary Spending: Rethinking the Role of Political Institutions
This paper reconciles the long-standing debate on electorally motivated government spending by embedding politicians’ electoral incentives in political institutions. Using budgetary spending data from 21 OECD countries from 1973 to 2000, this paper shows that electoral budgetary cycles take the form of higher district-specific spending under single-member district systems and higher social welfare spending under proportional representation system…
Sources of Corruption in Authoritarian Regimes
Objectives. We seek to investigate the determinants of corruption in authoritarian polities. We hypothesize that corruption in nondemocratic settings will be greater where the ruling group is personalistic rather than a political party or a military clique and that it will be greater where rulers expect to remain in power longer. We construct a new operationalization of the selectorate theory advanced by Bueno de Mesquita et al. Methods. We use c…
Electoral Systems and Real Prices: Panel Evidence for the OECD Countries, 1970–2000
In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and vote…
The Choice of Electoral Systems in Electoral Autocracies
This article develops a theory to account for the variation in electoral systems in electoral authoritarian regimes. We argue that resource-rich dictators are incentivized to employ proportional representation systems to alleviate the threat from the masses and pre-empt the emergence of new opposition, while resource-poor dictators tend to choose majoritarian systems to co-opt ruling elites in the legislature. Using cross-national data on elector…
Preferential Trade Agreements, Income Inequality, and Authoritarian Survival
This paper investigates the political and economic consequences of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in authoritarian countries. Based on the Heckscher –Ohlin model of international trade and theories of inequality and regime transition, this paper argues that dictators sign PTAs as a means of consolidating their authoritarian rule. Specifically, PTAs help dictators reduce economic inequality by enriching poor laborers and thereby atte…
Autocracy and human capital
Corruption predictability and corruption voting in Asian democracies
Competitive Corruption: Factional Conflict and Political Malfeasance in Postwar Italian Christian Democracy
This article studies the relationship between cartels of politicians and systemic political corruption in a democratic setting. Some electoral systems, including open-list systems of proportional representation, encourage intraparty competition for office. The authors analyze the relationship between intraparty conflict in postwar Italy's dominant political party, the Christian Democrats, and charges of malfeasance against Christian Democratic me…
Veto players and the structure of budgets in advanced industrialized countries
This article tests expectations generated by the veto players theory with respect to the over time composition of budgets in a multidimensional policy space. The theory predicts that countries with many veto players (i.e., coalition governments, bicameral political systems, presidents with veto) will have difficulty altering the budget structures. In addition, countries that tend to make significant shifts in government composition will have comm…
Electoral Incentives for Political Corruption under Open-List Proportional Representation
Despite the considerable attention paid to the aggregate-level determinants of political corruption, until recently little empirical work has attempted to understand what systematic factors drive individual politicians to corruption. To reduce this gap, this paper hypothesizes that under open-list proportional representation in which personal votes are expensive yet critical for politicians to win election, politicians' electoral uncertainty rega…
Corruption and Trust: Exceptionalism in Asian Democracies
While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the nega…
State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Forwards, Backwards, or Together
Across sub-Saharan Africa, new democracies emerge only in the context of relatively effective states. Using aggregate indicators of democracy and governance plus new public opinion data, the authors show which aspects of state building are most important. The scope of state infrastructure and the delivery of welfare services have little impact on democratization. But the establishment of a rule of law—as experienced through improvements in person…
Electoral Systems, District Magnitude and Corruption
The relationship between electoral systems and corruption in a large sample of contemporary democratic nations is analysed in this article. Whereas previous studies have shown that closed-list proportional representation is associated with greater (perceived) corruption than open-list PR, it is demonstrated here that this relationship fails to hold once district magnitude is considered. The theory underlying this study draws on work on ‘the perso…
Electoral Incentives and Budgetary Spending: Rethinking the Role of Political Institutions
This paper reconciles the long-standing debate on electorally motivated government spending by embedding politicians’ electoral incentives in political institutions. Using budgetary spending data from 21 OECD countries from 1973 to 2000, this paper shows that electoral budgetary cycles take the form of higher district-specific spending under single-member district systems and higher social welfare spending under proportional representation system…
Electoral Systems and Real Prices: Panel Evidence for the OECD Countries, 1970–2000
In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and vote…
Sources of Corruption in Authoritarian Regimes
Objectives. We seek to investigate the determinants of corruption in authoritarian polities. We hypothesize that corruption in nondemocratic settings will be greater where the ruling group is personalistic rather than a political party or a military clique and that it will be greater where rulers expect to remain in power longer. We construct a new operationalization of the selectorate theory advanced by Bueno de Mesquita et al. Methods. We use c…
Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability
Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity from deputies suspected of criminal wrongdoing, the authors analyze the political careers of members of the Chamber during the first eleven postwar legislatures (1948–94). They find that judicial investigation typically did not discourage deputies from s…
Preferential Trade Agreements, Income Inequality, and Authoritarian Survival
This paper investigates the political and economic consequences of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in authoritarian countries. Based on the Heckscher –Ohlin model of international trade and theories of inequality and regime transition, this paper argues that dictators sign PTAs as a means of consolidating their authoritarian rule. Specifically, PTAs help dictators reduce economic inequality by enriching poor laborers and thereby atte…
Economic inequality, winner-loser gap, and satisfaction with democracy
An Insider–Outsider Theory of Popular Tolerance for Corrupt Politicians
This article addresses the puzzle of electoral support for corrupt politicians in emerging democracies by examining citizens’ varying attitudes toward political corruption. We make an important theoretical distinction between perceptions of and tolerance for corruption, and argue that these different attitudes vary across individuals depending on whether they are political insiders or outsiders. We test our theory using Afrobarometer survey data …
Jong-sung You, Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared
Over the years much ink has been spilt asserting that democracy and economic growth reduce corruption. Indeed, conventional wisdom holds that weakened democratic institutions and poor economic deve
Corruption predictability and corruption voting in Asian democracies
Autocracy and human capital
The Choice of Electoral Systems in Electoral Autocracies
This article develops a theory to account for the variation in electoral systems in electoral authoritarian regimes. We argue that resource-rich dictators are incentivized to employ proportional representation systems to alleviate the threat from the masses and pre-empt the emergence of new opposition, while resource-poor dictators tend to choose majoritarian systems to co-opt ruling elites in the legislature. Using cross-national data on elector…
Political science (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Democracy (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Corruption and Economic Development (8 works) · Language change (8 works) · Development economics (7 works)