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Corruption is widely believed to be a self-reinforcing phenomenon, in the sense that the incentive to engage in corrupt acts increases as corruption becomes more widespread. Some argue that corruption's self-reinforcing property necessarily implies that incremental anticorruption reforms cannot be effective, and that the only way to escape a high-corruption equilibrium "trap" is through a so-called "big bang" or "big push." However, corruption's self-reinforcing property does not logically entail the necessity of a big bang approach to reform. Indeed, corruption's self-reinforcing property may strengthen the case for pursuing sustained, cumulative incremental reforms. While there may be other reasons to prefer a big bang approach to an incremental approach, this conclusion cannot be grounded solely or primarily on corruption's self-reinforcing character.

This article contributes to the development of a positive theory of the interaction between institutional checks and balances and public accountability. In particular, the authors are interested in how various institutional separation-of-powers rules affect voter behavior, and in how these rational voter responses may affect our positive and normative assessment of different separation-of-powers regimes. The authors compare three stylized institutional arrangements: The first is a "Unilateral Authority". The second regime is a "Mandatory Checks and Balances" regime. The third and final regime they consider is an "Opt-In Checks and Balances" system. These are obviously only three of a much larger number of possible institutional arrangements, but their simple structure is useful in generating comparative insights that might then be transposed to more complex and realistic institutional settings.