Fresh pipes with dirty water
How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6259458 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marina Povitkina (0000-0003-2548-5027, University of Gothenburg Sweden, corresponding author), Ketevan Bolkvadze (0000-0002-8984-8598, Lund University Sweden) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1191-1212 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Political Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0304-4130 • E-ISSN: 1475-6765 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1475-6765.12330 |
| OpenAlex | W2922299958 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 50 |
A large strand of research holds that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods. Yet, there is a large variation in how democracies perform, indicating that democratic institutions alone do not suffice for securing citizens’ wellbeing. Recent studies have stressed the equal importance of state capacity for public goods delivery. These studies, however, rarely investigate how the lack of state capacity mutes the effects of democratic institutions on public goods provision. This article addresses this gap by using a mixed methods design. First, the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government (QoG) are tested on the previously under‐researched domain of the provision of clean water. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where QoG is high. If QoG is low, more democracy is even related to lower water quality. The second stage of the analysis proceeds by examining how poor QoG disrupts the effects of democracy on public access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova. The analysis illustrates that democracy has a number of positive effects and incentivises politicians to focus on the visible aspects of water provision, including the expansion of the water pipe network. However, low QoG hampers adoption and implementation of long‐term policies necessary for securing an aspect of water provision that is harder to achieve – namely water quality. This leaves the fresh pipes with dirty water
Accountability · Business · Democracy · Economics · Government (linguistics · Microeconomics · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public good · Quality (philosophy · Representative democracy · State (computer science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · International Development and Aid · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Public Administration
Predictors of access to safe drinking water
Measures of state capacity
Socio-economic barriers to adopting pre-paid water meters in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Beyond the tap
Distribuição de investimentos públicos, infraestrutura urbana e desigualdade socioespacial em Curitiba
Rethinking responses to the world’s water crises
Silver Lining to Extreme Weather Events? Democracy and Climate Change Mitigation
Assessing the Impact of Democratic Institutions and Administrative Capacity on National Carbon Emissions Reduction
Democracy and public goods revisited
Environmental commitments in different types of democracies
Local interest group activity and environmental degradation in authoritarian regimes
Quality of government for environmental wellbeing? Subnational evidence from European regions
Is impartiality enough? Government impartiality and citizens' perceptions of public service quality
Voting for bureaucracy? Contestation, suffrage and meritocracy
The Torrents of Spring
Political Order in Changing Societies
Ideas and Institutions
The Quality of Government
Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America
Politician’s Dilemma
Corruption, Pollution, and the Kuznets Environment Curve
World Development Indicators
Why Nations Fail
On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data
Bringing the State Back In
Economic Growth and the Environment
Democracy and Development
Just Institutions Matter
The origins of political order
Power and the Vote
Organizing Leviathan
The Logic of Political Survival
Development as Freedom
A global indicator of wastewater treatment to inform the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Democracy, State Capacity, and Economic Growth
Public good provision under dictatorship and democracy
Which Dictators Produce Quality of Government
Democracy and Economic Growth
Democracy and Human Development
What Democracy Does (and Doesn’t Do) for Basic Services
Corruption, Bureaucratic Failure and Social Policy Priorities
Explaining Fixed Effects
Does Democracy Enhance Health? New Empirical Evidence 1900–2012
Gimme Shelter
Above Politics
What Is Governance
State First, Then Democracy
Democracy and State Capacity
Does democracy produce quality of government
Meritocratic administration and democratic stability
The Invisible Hand of Democracy
Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities
Is Democracy Good for the Poor
Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth
Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies
The quality of government
Clientelism
What Is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions
The limits of democracy in tackling climate change
Bureaucracy and Growth
The autonomous power of the state
Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,5 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 15 |