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"Elite politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen hold the fortunes of societies in their hands not only because of their direct influence on politics, administration and economy but also since their behavior indirectly signals how things are done. How are elites persuaded not to use their privileged position to enrich themselves at the expense of the society at large? The answer from research, so far, is through formal and informal institutional constraints, which in different ways alter incentives at the top. This edited volume contributes to the knowledge of the interaction between elites, institutions and other constraints and how this affects corruption and other forms of bad government. It problematizes the incentives for elites and masses to fight grand and petty corruption, respectively, and demonstrates the importance of elite constraints for good societies, where infant mortality is low and life expectancy and satisfaction are high. It also explores the behavior of a largely unconstrained elite group, namely the diplomatic corps, and shows how corruption not only takes the form of money transfers but also of sexual exploitation. It reveals how even rather distant historical experiences incite elites to behave either in line with their immediate self-interests or with the interest of the society at large. Taking a step further, it considers different ways in which elites' preferences are more closely aligned with the general interest when, for example, monitoring mechanisms are introduced through interactions between recruitment regimes to the bureaucracy, or economic motivations and democratic accountability. Finally, it explores how political parties can be a positive force in the fight against corruption and bad government"--

Published online: 10 May 2018 ; This paper presents results from one of the first global studies on the relationship between media sexism and the share of candidates for the lower chamber of national parliaments who are women. Data on media sexism come from the Global Media Monitoring Project, the most reliable worldwide source for media coverage from a gender perspective. The data on share of female political candidates come from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The results show that that there is, even when controlling for the number of women in parliament, electoral system, gender quotas, level of human development, level of women's rights, freedom from corruption, and media access, a significant relationship between media sexism—measured as (i) the share of all news subjects that are women and (ii) the share of all news subjects portrayed in the function of experts who are women—and the share of women candidates for parliament: the higher the level of media sexism, the lower the share of women candidates. The theory discussed zooms in on a bystander effect: We hypothesize that sexist portrayals of women in the media stifle ambition among women who, in a less sexist media environment, would be willing to stand as political candidates.

Across Europe, while some regions elect relatively high shares of women to local councils, men almost exclusively dominate the councils of others. New research by Aksel Sundström and Lena Wängnerud suggests that informal recruitment practices are important in understanding why. Their study shows that in regions where corruption is endemic in local government, authorities elect lower shares of women – a finding with implications for strategies on how to increase women's presence in elected bodies.

This article presents evidence from 18 European countries showing that where levels of corruption are high, the proportion of women elected is low. We hypothesize that corruption indicates the presence of 'shadowy arrangements' that benefit the already privileged and pose a direct obstacle to women when male-dominated networks influence political parties' candidate selection. There is also an indirect signal effect derived from citizen's experiences with a broad range of government authorities. The article uses data that are more fine-grained than usual in this literature. We conduct an empirical test on a new dataset on locally elected councilors in 167 regions in Europe. Using a novel measure of regional quality of government and corruption we perform a multi-level analysis with several regional- and national-level controls. This study provides a unique picture of the proportion of women in locally elected assemblies throughout Europe and a new way of understanding the variations found.

How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concept of 'parliamentary political generation' where the core element is the combination of an influx of large numbers of newcomers into the elected assembly and an electoral context that is formative – that is, that exhibits characteristics that distinguish the election from other elections. Second, an empirical test is conducted where other factors such as party affiliation and social background characteristics are controlled for. Finally, the test on the impact of parliamentary political generations is conducted in a context – the Swedish Riksdag – where parliamentary party groups are strong. The data used is the Parliamentary Surveys 1985–2010 conducted at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The political generation in focus is the 'Class of 94'. The results show that the Class of 94 distinguish themselves by being more feminist than their senior colleagues and other groups of newcomers in Swedish elections. This is the feminist generation in Swedish politics.

Conditional cash transfer programs, an innovation in social welfare administration, have received considerable acclaim as a means of enhancing human capital and reducing leakage of public resources through corruption. While numerous studies examine the effects of the program on human capital indicators in Mexico and various other countries that have adopted the approach, little is known about the effects of these programs on levels of corruption and on political life more generally. Using data from Transparency International Mexico, the Federal Register of Civil Society Organizations, and the national census, this paper analyzes whether conditional cash transfers have any bearing on corruption but also on two other aspects of political life argued to affect government probity in the long term: the density of civil society organizations and the empowerment of women as indicated by levels of active involvement in civil society. The conclusions are encouraging with respect to reducing corruption but rather dismal regarding the effects on civil society and the empowerment of women.

Cultural explanations are frequent in social science research. In gender studies, they are especially common in cross-country comparative research that attempts to explain variations in everyday life situations for women and men. A noticeable example is found in the book Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World, by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris (2003). Inglehart and Norris construct a gender-equality scale from measurements on attitudes among citizens regarding women as political leaders, women's professional and educational rights, and women's traditional role as mother. The results show that Finland, Sweden, West Germany, Canada, and Norway are the countries most influenced by egalitarian values. At the other end of the spectrum countries like Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Jordan are found (p. 33). The authors demonstrate that egalitarian values are systematically related to the actual conditions of women's and men's lives. They conclude that modernization underpins cultural change, that is, attitudinal change from traditional to gender-equal values, and that these cultural changes have major impact on gender-equality processes.

"Gender, Politics, and Corruption" published on by Oxford University Press.