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Analysing Corruption: Effects on the Transparency of Public Administrations

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Outcome-Based Performance Management in the Public Sector

Part of the book series: System Dynamics for Performance Management ((SDPM,volume 2))

Abstract

There is a vast body of literature supporting the claim that the availability and accessibility of information play a vital role in contrasting corruption. Bastida and Benito (2007) demonstrate that the less corrupt a country is, the higher its level of budget transparency is, entailing that is not transparency which curbs corruption but rather the other way around. In this latter perspective the present study tries to contribute to the debate about transparency and corruption through the analysis of a case related to the diffusion of corruption in the twenty Italian regions. The study demonstrates that in regions with higher levels of corruption public administrations commitment towards transparency is lower compared to regions with inferior corruption levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For full details about the construction of the index see Nifo and Vecchione (2014).

  2. 2.

    The full data-set is available at https://sites.google.com/site/institutionalqualityindex/dataset.

  3. 3.

    See www.magellanopa.it.

  4. 4.

    According to the ISTAT classification: the north area includes Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Lombardia, Piemonte, Trentino Alto Adige Valle d’Aosta, Veneto; the central area includes Lazio, Marche, Toscana and Umbria; south and islands area includes Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia, Sardegna, Sicilia.

  5. 5.

    The test applied is the Bonferroni test for the studentized residuals obtained from a linear model fit. See among others (Weisberg 2014).

  6. 6.

    Felice and Vasta drawing from the work of Cafagna (1988) developed the concepts of regional active and passive modernisation. According to the authors: “…we have regional active modernization when local elites actively participate to the modernizing process, by sharing common values and coherently implementing the views of the national “historic bloc” (Felice and Vasta 2015, p. 45). Passive modernisation on the contrary occurs when “…..there is no “identification” between the elite which advocates modernization and the rest of the community” and on the contrary there are: “……. “extractive” political and economic institutions, where the elites have the interest to pursue some modernization in order to grasp the resulting extra-output, yet preventing the rest of the population from taking any advantage of it” (Felice and Vasta 2015, p. 45).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Aziendali, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Viale S. Ignazio 17, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Isabella Fadda, Paola Paglietti, Elisabetta Reginato & Aldo Pavan

Authors
  1. Isabella Fadda
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  2. Paola Paglietti
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  3. Elisabetta Reginato
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  4. Aldo Pavan
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Correspondence to Isabella Fadda .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Policy Analysis & Public Mgmt, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

    Elio Borgonovi

  2. Dept. of Economics & Business Mgmt Sci, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Dept. of Economics & Business Mgmt Sci, Milan, Italy

    Eugenio Anessi-Pessina

  3. CED4 – System Dynamics Group, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Carmine Bianchi

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Fadda, I., Paglietti, P., Reginato, E., Pavan, A. (2018). Analysing Corruption: Effects on the Transparency of Public Administrations. In: Borgonovi, E., Anessi-Pessina, E., Bianchi, C. (eds) Outcome-Based Performance Management in the Public Sector. System Dynamics for Performance Management, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57018-1_13

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