Suchergebnisse

PurposeCorruption and anti-corruption are two often studied topics in social sciences today and often highly debated issues in both the national and international political arena. They are important in the context of democratization and democratic consolidation as they include the idea of a government that serves its citizens in a transparent manner, and tie with it notions of social and political trust. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between anti-corruption policies and social and political trust and hypothesizes that anti-corruption policies have a desired positive effect on social and political trust in settings with low and moderate levels of corruption, whereas they have no effect in highly corrupt settings.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses regression analysis and includes all world democracies (33) for which complete data are available for a period of nine years (2005-2014).FindingsResults indicate that anti-corruption policies have the expected results on social trust: in low to moderately corrupt countries, the effect is positive, while it disappears in highly corrupt countries. There are no significant effects on political trust.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the results are mixed, they point to the importance of studying further the relationship.Originality/valueThis study is important because it questions the effect of anti-corruption policies that are assumed to have particular effects on corruption. It is also the first study to analyze the effect on such policies on social and political trust in democracies.

Health and health care provision are one of the most important topics in public policy, and often a highly debated topic in the political arena. The importance of considering European Union accession's impact on the health care sector of new member countries is highlighted by studies showing that accession to the Union has significant impacts on the socio-economic indicators of the new members, while the impacts on the health care system are less known. This is particularly important for a Central and East European country such as Croatia, where a policy responsive government indicates a high level of quality of democracy (Roberts, 2009) and where issues in the health care system have been carried over from the previous regime. In this study, I summarize the current status of health care in the European Union and the reasons behind the failure to create a stronger legislative framework around health care issues and its consequences. I find that the absence of more meaningful hard laws has stimulated the creation of alternative soft law practices to harmonize health systems across the Union, with uncertainty about its impact on health outcomes in new member countries, including Croatia. Adapted from the source document.

Health and health care provision are one of the most important topics in public policy, and often a highly debated topic in the political arena. The importance of considering European Union accession's impact on the health care sector of new member countries is highlighted by studies showing that accession to the Union has significant impacts on the socio-economic indicators of the new members, while the impacts on the health care system are less known. This is particularly important for a Central and East European country such as Croatia, where a policy responsive government indicates a high level of quality of democracy (Roberts, 2009) and where issues in the health care system have been carried over from the previous regime. In this study, I summarize the current status of health care in the European Union and the reasons behind the failure to create a stronger legislative framework around health care issues and its consequences. I find that the absence of more meaningful hard laws has stimulated the creation of alternative soft law practices to harmonize health systems across the Union, with uncertainty about its impact on health outcomes in new member countries, including Croatia. Adapted from the source document.

This article tackles the questions of why some Central and East European countries have been more successful at creating a better-performing health care sector while others left it in decay. To answer this question, the effects of corruption, institutional effectiveness, and level of democratic consolidation are considered regarding the ability of the health care sector to prevent cancer deaths. The tests of the hypotheses through an auto-regressive distributed lags model yield a mixed bag of results. First, corruption has a significant increasing short-term effect on cancer mortality in some models and a decreasing effect in models where the alternative measure of corruption is used. These same effects persist over the long term. Institutional effectiveness also has mixed results. However, effective institutions lower cancer mortality in the long term.

This article looks at the impact of World Bank funding on health care sector performance in Central and Eastern European countries. The World Bank has been one of few organizations involved in health care sector assistance in these nations during the transition period, mainly through funds disbursement. This article tests hypotheses that those countries that perform better economically, that are more favorably evaluated by the World Bank, and that have more effective institutions are also more likely to benefit from World Bank assistance, through improvements in the performance of their health care sectors.

Why do some countries still experience high mortality rates & low health care sector effectiveness thirteen years after the postcommunist transition? Why have some been successful at addressing their health care needs while others left their public health in decay? This study attempts to answer the puzzle by looking at the role of World Bank assistance in the health care reforms of the Central & Eastern European countries during the transition period. It does so by focusing at the type of reform undertaken by countries, as well as at the significance of the loan amount & the ability of the countries to "absorb" the loans successfully, that is, to use the resources given effectively. The results indicate that those countries that reformed earlier & developed strong institutions were also more likely to use the World Bank loans more efficiently to reform their health care sector. Thus, the effectiveness of their health care system was higher than that of countries that undertook gradual reforms, received less World Bank assistance, & whose institutions were weak. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 27 References. Adapted from the source document.