Abstract
Government effectiveness could be explained by the level of well-informed electorate members, who use the press to learn more about politicians and public servants. Thus, a free press may improve citizens’ accessibility to this information, which in turn will make it more difficult for politicians and public servants to cover up or get away with corrupt behaviour, so the quality of the government could be affected by the media freedom. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to determine the effect of the freedom of the press on government effectiveness, considering additionally environmental, institutional, and political characteristics as factors that could determine the level of government effectiveness. To achieve this aim, we examined 202 central governments and compared them across countries using the World Bank data set of Governance Indicators for 2002–2008. The results show that the media, the organizational environment, and political characteristics may be determinants of the level of government effectiveness, taking countries’ economic development into account.
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Notes
Although authoritarian governments also hold election, in that case citizens do not choose government leaders or public policies (Geddes 2005). Despite that, electoral authoritarian regimes play the game of multiparty elections but under the electoral authoritarian rule, according to which, elections are broadly inclusive and minimally competitive because opposition parties may experience repressive treatment (Schedler 2009). Authoritarian governments hold elections because dictators may deter challenges from elite rivals, influencing opponents’ perceptions of the difficulty involved in unseating the dictator (Geddes 2005).
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Government effectiveness: concept measured
Representative sources | |
DRI | Government instability: An increase in government personnel turnover rate at senior levels that reduces the GDP growth rate by 2 % during any 12-month period |
Government ineffectiveness: A decline in government personnel quality at any level that reduces the GDP growth rate by 1 % during any 12-month period | |
Institutional failure: A deterioration of government capacity to cope with national problems as a result of institutional rigidity that reduces the GDP growth rate by 1 % during any 12-month period | |
EGV | Global E-government |
EIU | Quality of bureaucracy |
Excessive bureaucracy/red tape | |
GCS | Quality of general infrastructure |
Quality of public schools | |
GWP | Satisfaction with public transportation system |
Satisfaction with roads and highways | |
Satisfaction with education system | |
IPD | Government-citizen relations |
Capacity of the tax administration to implement measures decided on | |
Quality of the supply of public goods: education and basic health | |
Capacity of the political authorities | |
MIG | Quality of bureaucracy |
PRS | Bureaucratic quality: Measures institutional strength and quality of the civil service, assesses how much strength and expertise bureaucrats have and how able they are to manage political alternations without drastic interruptions in government services, or policy changes |
WMO | Policy consistency and forward planning: How confident businesses can be of the continuity of economic policy stance –whether a change of government will entail major policy disruption, and whether the current government has pursued a coherent strategy |
Bureaucracy: An assessment of the quality of the country’s bureaucracy. The better the bureaucracy the quicker decisions are made and the more easily foreign investors can go about their business | |
Non-representative sources | |
ADB | Management of public debt |
Policies to improve efficiency of public sector | |
Revenue mobilization | |
Budget management | |
AFR | Based on your experiences, how easy or difficult is it to obtain household services (like electricity or telephone)? |
Based on your experiences, how easy or difficult is it to obtain an identity document (like birth certificate, passport)? | |
Government handling of health services | |
Government handling of education | |
ASD | Civil service |
Revenue mobilization and budget management | |
Management and efficiency of public expenditures | |
BPS | How problematic are telecommunications for the growth of your business |
How problematic is electricity for the growth of your business | |
How problematic is transportation for the growth of your business | |
BRI | Bureaucratic delays |
BTI | Consensus building |
Governance capability | |
Effective use of resources | |
CPIA | Management of external debt |
Quality public administration | |
Revenue mobilization | |
Budget management | |
IFD | Allocation and management of public resources for rural development |
LBO | Trust in government |
WCY | Government economic policies do not adapt quickly to changes in the economy |
The public service is not independent from political interference | |
Government decisions are not effectively implemented | |
Bureaucracy hinders business activity | |
The distribution infrastructure of goods and services is generally inefficient | |
Policy direction is not consistent | |
Appendix 2: Descriptive analysis results
Table 3 provides a synthesis of the descriptive statistics for each of the variables proposed for the analysis, reflecting the maximum and minimum values, their mean and the standard deviation.
It can be observed that the mean value of GE is 49.81, on a scale of 0–100, showing that, in general, government effectiveness is neither good nor bad, in relation to the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies. It can be seen that the values of government effectiveness are lower in the first 2 years, whereas in 2004 this indicator underwent an important increase. Since 2006, the opposite trend can be observed, although the reduction in government effectiveness is smaller than the increment identified in the previous years.
In the case of independent variables, PRESS*DEVELOPED has a mean value of 51.016, so in comparison to the mean value of PRESS (46.06), we can see that developed countries take positions at the top of the ranking, indicating that these countries have a greater freedom of press and lower level of corruption.
Regarding organizational environment factors, the average of GDPpc is about 1,1187.97 UD$ and about 81.32 % of the adult population is literate (LITERACY). In relation to institutional characteristics, the mean value of DENSITY is 370.22, so on average there are 371 inhabitants per km2. In addition, about 15 % of seats in the national parliaments are taken by women (WOMEN). Finally, the political constraints index (POLCON) has a mean of 0.27, taking values between 0 (total alignment) and 1 (total independency). This means that in general there is an alignment among parties in changes of public policies.
In Table 4, the univariate descriptive statistics related to the sample mean is identified for each of the time periods analysed.
In general, the government effectiveness index (GE) and political constraints index (POLCON) have no important changes during the time period 2002–2008. GE takes values between 49 and 51 and POLCON takes values between 0.26 and 0.29. However, the percentage of seats taken by women in national parliaments (WOMEN) and the level of economic development (GDPpc) increase continuously in this period of time. DENSITY grew from 2002 to 2007, but in 2008 it was reduced. And finally, LITERACY has no clear tendency. It suffered reductions in 2003, 2005 and 2008, since the number of literate adults was lower in these years than in the immediately previous ones. The evolution of PRESS and PRESS*DEVELOPED was more or less constant, showing that developed countries took positions at the top of the ranking during these years, thus they had more freedom of press and a lower level of corruption.
The correlation between the proposed variables is presented in Table 5. In this respect, it can be observed that all the independent variables, except DENSITY, show a strong positive correlation with the dependent variable (GE). Ordered according to their Pearson’s correlation coefficients, the most significant relations would exist with the variables GDPpc (0.683), PRESS (0.597), POLCON (0.490) and LITERACY (0.475). This means that endogeneity problems may be appeared, thus we use the GMM estimator that allows correcting endogeneity through different instrument variables. In the case of relations between the independent variables, the GDPpc variable is positively correlated with WOMEN and LITERACY. However, the coefficients are not so high (they are lower than 0.5).
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García-Sánchez, IM., Cuadrado-Ballesteros, B. & Frías-Aceituno, JV. Does media freedom improve government effectiveness? A comparative cross-country analysis. Eur J Law Econ 42, 515–537 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-014-9462-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-014-9462-z