#139 [EN] Bo Rothstein - Does a good government require more than just democracy?

Data: Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:53:27 +0000  ·  Duração: 01:14:47

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José Maria Pimentel 00:00:00.00O seguinte é uma conversa com o cientista político, Boo Rothstein. 00:00:11.62A introdução em inglês começa ao segundo minuto. 00:00:14.72Olá, o meu nome é José Maria Pimentel e este é o 45 graus. 00:00:19.04Quem ouve o 45 graus há algum tempo sabe que eu acho que Portugal tem um problema estrutural de falta de qualidade das instituições. 00:00:25.64Somos, historicamente, um país mal governado. 00:00:28.30E isso, não estando de todo circunscrito ao Estado, começa aí. 00:00:32.38Temos uma dificuldade estrutural em pensar e planear a longo prazo. 00:00:36.44Temos uma grande renitência em decidir e fazer escolhas difíceis. 00:00:39.38E, ao mesmo tempo, apesar disso, temos políticas públicas frequentemente erráticas e que estão sempre a mudar. 00:00:44.98E, claro, não vale a pena referir os exemplos, muitos deles recentes, de corrupção, nepotismo, clientelismo e outros tipos de discriminação. 00:00:52.04Tudo isto reflete-se negativamente numa série de indicadores de desenvolvimento desde o crescimento económico à desigualdade de oportunidades e qualidade de vida, nos quais continuamos a estar, na maioria dos casos, bem atrás dos países com que nos gostaríamos de comparar. 00:01:04.84E, no entanto, a verdade é que somos um país democrático, com falhas, mas claramente um dos países do mundo que se podem considerar democracias avançadas. 00:01:12.32A democracia é, obviamente, um bem em si mesmo, ou seja, independentemente dos resultados materiais que produz ou não produz. 00:01:18.70Mas a verdade é que esperaríamos também que a democracia ajudasse a garantir que o país é bem governado. 00:01:23.84No entanto, isso não tem acontecido e não estamos sozinhos. 00:01:26.46Portugal não é o único país do mundo em que a democracia não chega para ter um bom governo e não somos sequer dos casos mais extremos em que este fenómeno acontece. 00:01:34.00Foi para compreender melhor este puzzle que decidi trazer ao podcast o convidado deste episódio, o cientista político sueco Bu Rothstein, um dos principais investigadores mundiais na área da qualidade da governação. 00:01:44.98Como a conversa decorreu em inglês, e para que esta introdução possa ser compreendida por quem não fala a língua de Camões, vou passar agora para o inglês. 00:01:52.50My guest in this episode is Bu Rothstein, one of the world's leading researchers in the field of quality of government. 00:01:58.98He was, for most of his career, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, with also a brief stint at the University of Oxford. 00:02:06.98In 2004, he founded, together with his colleague, Soren Holmberg, the Quality of Government Institute at the same university, which has since become the world's main research centre in this field. 00:02:19.24This was a fascinating conversation. 00:02:21.50We started by discussing the puzzle of why democracy is not enough to ensure good governance. 00:02:26.90And this happens, according to Rothstein and other authors, because these two dimensions of the political system are very different in nature. 00:02:34.84Democracy refers to the input side of politics, that is, the way to which access to political power works through elections, whereas Quality of Government refers to the output side of politics, that is, to the way political power is exercised. 00:02:48.20So, while democracy may enable voters to select politicians and policies that reflect their concerns, that is not by itself sufficient to guarantee that those policies will be enacted effectively and without improper behaviour on the part of the political actors. 00:03:02.12This led us to the key question of how exactly do we define quality of government? 00:03:06.60One of the most influential definitions in this field was proposed by Rothstein himself, together with Jan Turell, and it defines quality of government as having to do with the extent to which the government operates with impartiality. 00:03:19.48This concept is closely related to corruption, that is, to the absence of it, but it is actually broader than that. 00:03:26.04In practice, for a state to act impartially means that it is not influenced by anything from bribes, political affiliation, personal connections or any kind of prejudice based on race, ethnicity or gender. 00:03:37.48Rothstein's idea is clearly persuasive, and you will explain it better than I do, but other authors have proposed alternative definitions and we also discussed some of them. 00:03:47.48One of those ideas is that of state capacity. 00:03:50.12Some authors point out that it is not enough for the public officials to act in a proper way, in order to be able to implement public policies, the state also needs resources, such as infrastructures, adequate information and a body of qualified and motivated civil servants. 00:04:05.48Other authors, such as Francis Fukuyama, another well-known political scientist, emphasize the importance of bureaucratic autonomy, that is, the extent to which civil servants are protected from pressures exerted by elected politicians. 00:04:18.84And there are many other related definitions, such as the idea of inclusive institutions, proposed by the economists Darren Acemoglu and James Robinson, which we also discussed, or the definition prescribed by the World Bank, which goes farther than these, perhaps too far, encompassing, for instance, the capacity of the state to implement sound policies. 00:04:38.76It was, as I said, a fascinating conversation in which we covered a lot of ground on the topic of quality of government. 00:04:43.64We discussed the practical effects of bad governance for citizens, the link between low quality of government and populism, the puzzle of the rise of China in the last decades, despite its authoritarian nature and its less-than-impartial government, and we also discussed whether condemnation of corruption is a human universal or it depends on culture, the effect of quality of government on social capital, and the relationship, if any, between the quality of governance in the public sector and in the private sector. 00:05:10.28Right towards the end, I asked my guest for a policy prescription. 00:05:15.48How can we improve democracy's ability to enhance quality of government? 00:05:15.48What can we do in order to improve the ability of democracy to lead to better governance? 00:05:21.48And he has, as you will see, a very clear-cut recipe for this. 00:05:27.80Hope you enjoy our conversation and until the next episode. 00:05:33.00Professor Boo Rothstein, welcome to Connecting Grave. 00:05:33.00Thank you. 00:05:41.64We'll be talking about quality of government, and I guess most people, if not everyone, agrees that quality of government or quality of governance, whatever you want to call it, it's important, if not crucial. 00:05:47.96What is maybe less obvious is how it relates to democracy, because I would say that for most people, the main indeterminate of quality of government is democracy. 00:05:59.16So they will tend to think that the more democratic a government is, or state is, the best governed it is. 00:06:04.60But that's not quite right, is it? 00:06:04.60Your research and your colleagues doesn't indicate a sort of a one-to-one relationship between democracy and
Bo Rothstein 00:06:16.20quality of government. 00:06:16.20Well, it is true that what you call the elite democracies usually also have high quality of government. 00:06:23.72But the curve is actually due shaped, meaning that countries that are a little in between democracy and autocracy seems to be, in many cases, the worst corrupt ones. 00:06:30.52And then you have a number of cases where you do not have democracy, but you have quite high quality of government. 00:06:38.92Singapore is one of one of the cases, but there are other cases. 00:06:49.00Actually, if you look at the data, there are about 10 countries of the 140 that are in the database that are democracies, but have very low quality of government and highly corrupt. 00:07:03.72And then there are about the same, about 10 countries that are not democracies, but that do have quality of government. 00:07:11.88And then there is electoral democracy and quality of government seems to have some tension. 00:07:21.56So, for example, in new democracies, there seems to be a number of temptations for the new government that is elected that they have a new government that they have huge difficulties to handle. 00:07:38.36That if they cannot handle it, it will destroy quality of government. 00:07:38.36One is, of course, to use jobs in the public sector to reward their political followers. 00:07:46.44So that will destroy meritocracy. 00:07:54.36Another thing is that nepotism seems to be a very big problem in many new democracies. 00:08:03.64A third problem is since they usually do not have organized funding for political campaigns and for political parties so that they can run elections, the temptation to plunder the public coffers to finance as your party becomes very big. 00:08:19.08And then the fourth thing, because they usually do not have impartial, reasonably quality government, it's very difficult for them to implement universal or broad-based reforms. 00:08:35.72Instead, there is a huge temptation to go for clientelistic policies. 00:08:35.72So you will reward those villages or parts of cities that you know a majority have voted for you and you will punish the others. 00:08:52.28So there are sort of logical differences between what we think is quality of government and especially weak democracies. 00:09:00.76You can see this also now in established democracies that electoral democracy is run on partisanship. 00:09:10.04No one goes into politics to be impartial. 00:09:10.04You want something for the poor or for the environment or for women or for your ethnic group. 00:09:18.36But the logic, as we have defined it for quality of government, is impartiality in the exercise of public power. 00:09:25.24And you see this also now in some established democracy. 00:09:33.72Take the United States under Donald Trump, where he tried to politicize something that is very dangerous, namely if you politicize the election administration. 00:09:42.04He also tried to politicize much of the public administration, not to speak of the courts. 00:09:49.56You see the same in Hungary. 00:09:49.56You see the same in Poland. 00:09:57.16And so here is a tension between partisanship, which is perfectly legitimate on the input side of the political system. 00:10:05.48What we think is the legitimate norm in the implementation of public policies, namely impartiality.
José Maria Pimentel 00:10:14.44And it's interesting because a lot of, you could call them classical authors, distrusted a lot of party politics. 00:10:19.80Even besides authors, I'm reminded of, even George Washington was famous to distrust the idea of having parties in the system, precisely for this idea. 00:10:25.32But then the fact is that democracies developed and we ended up building solid democracies, even with parties. 00:10:31.00So even with that
Bo Rothstein 00:10:36.76partial agenda of political parties. 00:10:36.76But there is a historical logic here, except for the United States, which do have a lot of problems with politicization, for example, of the courts that are completely politicized. 00:10:50.20All what you can say, the elite democracies in Northwestern Europe actually created reasonable quality of government procedures before they became democracies, not the other way around. 00:11:07.32And the logic is quite simple. 00:11:07.32If you cannot create the neutral, impartial, professional election administration, the losing side will not accept the election result. 00:11:15.88And so you will get all kinds of conflicts, even civil wars and all kinds of problems. 00:11:24.36Think about sports. 00:11:24.36You have two football teams. 00:11:24.36If the one football team thinks that the other football team has bought a referee, they will not come and play, right? 00:11:40.04So all such systems depends on that you have at least a minimal trust in the impartiality of those who are going to implement the rules.
José Maria Pimentel 00:11:49.48So the way you describe it, and that idea is also present to some extent in the literature, it almost seems that there's countries might find themselves in a trap here. 00:11:54.28Because if they don't have an enough developed government in terms of quality of government before democratizing, and also in terms of an impartial management of elections, it might create like a vicious circle out of which you cannot get, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:12:11.32Yeah, it's very difficult if you have two political parties and you know that the other party will politicize and use the public sector to reward their followers. 00:12:16.12You will do the same. 00:12:16.12But for me, personally, a very tragic example is South Africa. 00:12:22.52They have tremendous problems just with basic infrastructure, you know, electricity, water, roads. 00:12:29.48And one of the reasons is, of course, that the ANC decided to politicize very much the public administration. 00:12:38.20And if you do that, one thing is very clear: you will lose competence. 00:12:43.08You will lose competence for two reasons. 00:12:43.08First, people who do not belong to your party will not even try to go into the public administration or become a professional engineer for roads or electricity because they know that they will not get the fair chance. 00:12:59.48And then the people you recruit will not have the right competence because they are party loyalists, they are not professionals. 00:13:05.00So there are a number of tragic examples here where you can make a kind of ideal model here, so that of the different operational logic. 00:13:11.72So electoral democracy depends on partisanship, but quality of government on impartiality. 00:13:20.28And electoral democracy is based on rhetoric, if not demagogy, while quality of government is based on a kind of matter-of-factness. 00:13:34.68Electoral democracy is very person-centered, but the ideal of the quality of government is impersonality. 00:13:41.24And it's based on political loyalty, the electoral democracy, but quality of government is based on meritocracy. 00:13:48.76And in quality of government, the rule of law is very important. 00:13:54.28But in electoral democracy, you can say the rule of numbers is very important. 00:13:59.88So there are actually two quite distinct operational logics here. 00:13:59.88And I'm not saying that the one should dominate. 00:14:06.60I'm not arguing for rule by experts. 00:14:06.60You can say that I'm arguing for rule through experts. 00:14:14.44Yes. 00:14:14.44But it's very clear that these are two different, you can say, ideals. 00:14:14.44Both are important. 00:14:14.44In a good democracy, you have both, and they can sort of co-exist. 00:14:25.16But you have to be aware that there is a tension here between them. 00:14:32.04We see this now in Sweden. 00:14:32.04We have a new populist party who is sort of part of the government. 00:14:39.24And one thing they want to do is to politicize the cultural sector. 00:14:39.24So they want to decide what plays should be played on the theater and what the museums should exhibit or not. 00:14:44.68And we are not used to this. 00:14:52.60We're used to that there are professionals who make these decisions, not the politicians.
José Maria Pimentel 00:14:57.96Yeah. 00:14:57.96And as you point out, the two concepts are actually quite different. 00:14:57.96And if they work well, they sort of control each other in a sense.
Bo Rothstein 00:15:05.16Each other. 00:15:05.16Yeah. 00:15:05.16That's the point. 00:15:05.16That's a very important point made in a book by my two colleagues, Karl Dahlström and Victor Lapuente. 00:15:09.72In ideal system, these two logics or sectors of the political system control each other. 00:15:17.08That is what produces the best results. 00:15:17.08So politicians are often a little too opportunistic and too clientelistic. 00:15:24.76But if their policies have to run through meritocratic recruited high level bureaucrats, their logic is that they do not want to look bad in the eyes of their professional peers. 00:15:39.72So they want to be professional, they want to be impartial. 00:15:45.16And so you get this quite nice tension that in many cases produces quite good results.
José Maria Pimentel 00:15:52.84And it also works, I guess, in the other way around, right? 00:15:52.84So the quality of government defined in this sense would also not be enough because without democratic accountability, you might end up even acting in an impartial way, not producing results, which are aligned with the will of
Bo Rothstein 00:16:05.96the people, if you will. 00:16:05.96Of course, of course. 00:16:05.96I'm not arguing against democracy. 00:16:10.28You're saying democracy is not electoral democracy. 00:16:13.88Well, it's very clear. 00:16:13.88Electoral democracy without a reasonably uncorrupt, impartial professional civil service without the rule of law will not produce good outcomes when it comes to human well-being. 00:16:29.08Period.
José Maria Pimentel 00:16:32.60That's it. 00:16:32.60Yeah. 00:16:32.60And by the way, one doubt I get when reading these literature is where you put the boundary on who is covered by this impartiality dimension. 00:16:38.12Is it just the public servants, so the public bureaucracy or the elected politicians as well, the political representatives?
Bo Rothstein 00:16:49.48No, the political representatives, their job is to be partisan. 00:16:53.88But like the government? 00:16:55.08Yeah, they are the government. 00:16:55.08Let me take an example from my own country. 00:16:55.08So we have had a lot of support for farmers in northern Sweden. 00:17:00.84And it's, from my perspective, a complete waste of money. 00:17:09.80It's so far north. 00:17:09.80No one should do farming up there. 00:17:09.80But they want to do it for, yeah, historical reasons. 00:17:17.72Yeah, we have the same thing, yeah. 00:17:19.00But the important thing is when this partisan politics is going to be implemented, I'm absolutely sure that the civil servants in the National Bureau for Agricultural Affairs will not only give money to the party loyalists or to their friends, they will act in an impartial way. 00:17:38.52So this is the tension that needs to be handled.
José Maria Pimentel 00:17:42.76Yeah. 00:17:42.76So now it's perhaps a good time to delve into the concepts behind the definition of quality of government. 00:17:47.56Your own definition is that of impartiality. 00:17:47.56I've mentioned it quite a few times, which is very closely connected, but not the same thing as corruption, right? 00:17:52.44Absence of corruption, of course.
Bo Rothstein 00:17:57.96Yeah. 00:17:57.96The problem we had was this, that nobody has been able to present the working definition of corruption. 00:18:05.16The most standard and mostly used definition is something like abuse or misuse of public power for private care. 00:18:12.04Yeah. 00:18:14.20Now, this is an empty definition because abuse is not defined. 00:18:14.20You do not know what norm that is transgressed when you can speak about corruption. 00:18:20.68And this, of course, makes it impossible to measure it. 00:18:27.40And it invites all kinds of cultural relativism. 00:18:27.40What is corruption in Denmark is something completely different than corruption in Portugal, for example, which is not. 00:18:33.96That is not what people think. 00:18:39.40So we try to do what in military terms is known as when you make a circle operation. 00:18:50.76I don't know the exact English word, but something like this. 00:18:50.76So we try to define what is the opposite of corruption. 00:18:57.08What norms do we want the people who work in the public sector to obey, to uphold? 00:18:57.08And then we we settled for impartiality. 00:19:07.56We could have settled for the rule of law, but there are many areas in the public sector in the modern state, health care, education, care for elderly, where the concept of the rule of law really doesn't work. 00:19:20.76It's too narrow. 00:19:23.56Yeah, it's too narrow. 00:19:23.56And, you know, people who work there, they don't think of themselves as legal bureaucrats in a way. 00:19:30.84They are professionals. 00:19:30.84So that is why we settled for impartiality. 00:19:30.84Now, we have looked at ethical codes for, I think, some 30 countries. 00:19:37.24Many countries produce ethical codes for the civil service. 00:19:46.20And we have not only looked in Western countries, also countries in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia. 00:19:52.04And the most common norm in these ethical codes is impartiality. 00:19:52.04And of course, this comes basically from the work of the famous philosopher John Rawls. 00:19:59.08This is his idea about justice. 00:20:06.52I think it is important because what people think of as injustice is not if you get different treatment. 00:20:16.20Because in many cases, in most cases, different treatment is acceptable. 00:20:16.20Some students need more tutoring. 00:20:22.36Some patients need more. 00:20:22.36What people think of as unjust is favoritism. 00:20:22.36And favoritism is the opposite of impartiality. 00:20:33.96That you get things from the public sector that you're not supposed to get, because either you have paid money under the table, or you know the right people, or you belong to the right party, or whatever. 00:20:45.80So this is why we settle for impartiality. 00:20:45.80You actually know what type of norm that should not be transgressed. 00:20:55.00And that is, I think, a big advantage to just speak about abuse. 00:21:01.40That's an empty signifier. 00:21:01.40Nobody knows what abuse is.
José Maria Pimentel 00:21:05.88That's true. 00:21:05.88Yeah. 00:21:05.88And from a normative perspective, focus on justice. 00:21:05.88I agree that impartiality captures a lot of what's relevant here. 00:21:11.80My doubt or my reservations, if we will, with impartiality is to what extent does it capture other dimensions of a good government that go beyond justice and are related to or correlated and leads to good developments. 00:21:24.04Of course, there's one very important difficulty in this debate, which is that if you go too far, you are already measuring the outcomes and not the quality of government, which I know that's a limitation. 00:21:34.60But one thing we tend to think about when thinking about government of quality is a government which is able to pursue rational decisions, put long-term goals in front of short-term ones, which is one of the problems in those young democracies you described in the beginning. 00:21:51.64Do you think this flows directly from impartiality or would we need a difference? 00:21:55.88Of course, there's this literature on state capacity, which sort of intersects here. 00:22:00.12I'm very curious to get your take on this. 00:22:00.12So how do you see impartiality
Bo Rothstein 00:22:05.00related to this? 00:22:05.00We, and I say we because I work with so many colleagues in the Quality of Government Institute, we think of impartiality as a basic norm. 00:22:11.72Like, for example, in Robert Dahl's theory of democracy, he thinks of political equality as the basic norm. 00:22:20.12And then this can translate into very different and for historical reasons, special secondary norms. 00:22:28.76So if you take democracy, the Swiss democracy is very different from the American democracy that is very different from the Portuguese democracy, right? 00:22:41.64But they are all based on this basic norm, political equality. 00:22:41.64And I think the same for the civil service, the state, the public sector. 00:22:48.76So the public administration, how it's actually built can look very different. 00:22:54.92But it should always be possible to base this specific institutional configuration on this idea of impartiality. 00:23:03.56Now, you want competence, fine. 00:23:03.56But in practice, impartiality translates into meritocracy in recruitment and when you promote people. 00:23:11.24And that is you're likely to increase competence. 00:23:21.00Second, you want long term. 00:23:21.00Well, you get long term with this type of civil servants because they are not dependent on the next election in two or three years. 00:23:30.44So their sort of logic of reference is not the next election.
José Maria Pimentel 00:23:40.28Their logic of reference is, as you propose it, is accountability to their peers, basically.
Bo Rothstein 00:23:45.80Yeah, I think very much so, yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:23:47.48So it's a reputational thing, even not a monetary one, right? 00:23:47.48So even it's not even a monetary prize or a financial prize.
Bo Rothstein 00:23:53.96Let me tell you, very few people go into the civil service to become rich. 00:23:59.08Yes, that's true. 00:24:03.40Say you are head of a hospital. 00:24:06.92You're a doctor and you have been promoted because both your medical skills and your administrative skills to be head of a hospital. 00:24:11.88Then, of course, the most important thing for you is that the other heads of hospitals in your country or in your region think that you are doing a good job. 00:24:24.36That's the most important thing for you. 00:24:24.36That is how professionals and civil service think about what is good.
José Maria Pimentel 00:24:31.56Yeah, it's true. 00:24:31.56And so as long as you have meritocratic recruiting and safe careers and a predictable path, that's shooting too, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:24:40.28Yeah, I'm not arguing for sort of a very rigid type where you enter into the civil service after an exam when you are 23 and then it's promoted every third year. 00:24:47.72I'm thinking of meritocracy where other professionals are really trying to evaluate your factual competence, not paper competence. 00:25:02.68That is the important thing.
José Maria Pimentel 00:25:03.88Yeah. 00:25:03.88So basically, to sum up your argument, you think that bureaucratic capacity and quality would tend to flow or to be associated with an impartial system, with an impartial bureaucracy. 00:25:15.48Yes. 00:25:16.20I'm very curious to know how you think this idea, your idea of impartiality, relates to another strain in the literature, this one coming from economics, that from Massey Moglund and Robinson, among other authors, which emphasizes what they call inclusive institutions, which is a... 00:25:31.24Actually, I'm not sure if it's a narrow concept or a broader concept. 00:25:31.24It's a different one.
Bo Rothstein 00:25:35.48I have the highest respect of Daron, Assey Moglund and Jim Robinson. 00:25:35.48They are outstanding researchers. 00:25:42.76But conceptual precision is not their best game in time. 00:25:46.84Inclusive, what does that mean? 00:25:46.84It's a far too loose concept for me. 00:25:46.84And when they say that democracy promotes growth, if you look closely on how they measure democracy, many of their measures are quality of government, like the rule of law and things like that. 00:26:04.36And if you look even more closely, the heavy effect comes from the quality of government factors, not from electoral democracy.
José Maria Pimentel 00:26:16.44No, that's true. 00:26:16.44I think their idea of inclusive institutions is much more closely related to quality of government than democracy, because it has a rule of law, the respect for property rights. 00:26:25.88All of those things are, well, impartial. 00:26:27.80It's also the case, it's also the case that when people make up their mind, if they think that
Bo Rothstein 00:26:32.76their government is legitimate, democratic rights are important. 00:26:32.76Yes. 00:26:32.76Like free speech and right to vote. 00:26:41.32And so it's also that outcomes in terms of pensions and health care is important. 00:26:41.32But both these are far less important than things like government effectiveness, rule of law and control of corruption. 00:26:50.36That is what people pay most attention to when they make up their mind if they think that their government is legitimate. 00:27:02.92It's not the democratic rights. 00:27:02.92And how can you think about this? 00:27:02.92Well, because, you know, most political philosophers have put their name in blood that it's democratic rights that give legitimacy. 00:27:10.28It's not. 00:27:16.36But my theory runs like this. 00:27:16.36In elections around the world, about a third of the electorate do not even bother to vote, right? 00:27:24.52Even fewer take part in demonstrations, write op-ed articles or... 00:27:29.80Now, what happens in a democracy if you do not or cannot use your democratic rights with your life? 00:27:37.80Nothing. 00:27:37.80It just goes on, right? 00:27:37.80However, if you cannot get health care to your kids because you cannot afford to pay the bribes at the public hospital, the police won't protect you because you belong to a minority. 00:27:53.80You will not get that job that you are most qualified for in City Hall because you do not belong to the right party or you're a woman or so. 00:28:00.76And the fire brigade won't come because you call from the wrong part of the city. 00:28:08.44Then you are in real trouble in your life, right? 00:28:08.44So people are much more dependent on the public sector when it is supposed to deliver, actually delivers, than they are from democracy. 00:28:23.48Now, again, I'm a big fan of democracy. 00:28:23.48I do not argue against democracy, but you have to sort of be realistic here. 00:28:23.48What is important for people?
José Maria Pimentel 00:28:32.52And there's even another effect, which is that when the quality of government is low, so when people are not getting where they are voting for, their satisfaction with democracy would also decrease because they feel that their needs are not being factored into the decisions. 00:28:46.04Even if they go as far as being reflected into policies, the fact that the state machinery is not efficient means that they might not be implemented.
Bo Rothstein 00:28:53.80My close colleague and co-author, John Theorell, who is now professor at Department of Political Science in Stockholm, he has not published this yet, but he has presented the data. 00:29:07.00He has tried statistically using the VDEM data, you know, the Varieties of Democracy Institute, our sister institute, to try to explain what can explain the democratic backlash we have seen the last, since basically 2010, 2012. 00:29:27.72Well, is it low economic growth? 00:29:27.72No. Is it increased inequality? 00:29:27.72No. There are only two factors that have any weight. 00:29:27.72One is size. 00:29:27.72So big countries, democracies have gone back more. 00:29:27.72The other is corruption. 00:29:27.72What explains the democratic backlash is basically, since you cannot do much about your country size, it is corruption. 00:29:27.72Period.
José Maria Pimentel 00:29:55.24Sorry, before we go to corruption. 00:29:55.24What's the, what's the causality on the country's side side?
Bo Rothstein 00:29:59.56You see more democratic backlash in big countries, Russia, United States, Russia.
José Maria Pimentel 00:30:05.56But is there a reason? 00:30:05.56So does Theorell have a, like, propose a hypothesis for that or just, that's just a correlation when we cannot explain? 00:30:12.44I don't know. 00:30:12.44I don't know. 00:30:12.44I don't know. 00:30:12.44You have to ask. 00:30:12.44I haven't thought about this. 00:30:16.76We'll see. 00:30:16.76Yeah.
Bo Rothstein 00:30:17.96Since I'm policy oriented, you cannot do so much about your sons.
José Maria Pimentel 00:30:22.32Yes, sure, sure. 00:30:22.32No, no, definitely not. 00:30:22.32You can split up, but it's usually not easy. 00:30:22.32But it's very interesting you raise this point, because I was going precisely to ask you about this, because when one starts thinking conceptually about the difference between democracy, or quality of democracy, if you will, and quality of government, and then you think about this backlash against democracy and populism. 00:30:41.44One very quickly sees that the answer is much more on the quality of government side than on the democracy side, which is interesting, because it goes counter to many arguments, for instance, Kaz Mood's argument, you've already heard. 00:30:52.12So his argument is that this backlash, what he calls an illiberal democracy, or an illiberal democratic movement, is a response against a liberalism which had became undemocratic. 00:31:02.56But in a sense, the problem might not be lack of democracy, but rather lower quality of government. 00:31:07.72Because in many cases, what you see backlash against is not always, but it's corruption and other forms of impartiality, in a sense of not reflecting the needs of people who were kind of felt that were left out of the system.
Bo Rothstein 00:31:19.62Yeah, I have a paper where I tried to explain the success of Donald Trump, from a corruption perspective. 00:31:30.22And I think it makes quite some sense. 00:31:33.38First, in his rhetoric, was very much centered around that his opponents were corrupt, and that Washington was corrupt.
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:41.60Dreading the swamp and all that talk.
Bo Rothstein 00:31:43.26Yeah, and secondly, the liberal democrats in the United States have been very much connected to different forms of quotas for minorities, or preferential treatment. 00:31:59.96And this is a very difficult policy to implement in a way that people find acceptable. 00:32:06.74And there is an interesting political philosopher, Mark Lilla, who made this argument that one of the reasons that the democrats have lost so badly is that many white working class voters feel probably they are completely wrong, but they feel that they are now discriminated against in an unjust way. 00:32:32.24I mean, this is probably factually completely untrue, but that doesn't mean so much, because people, it's their mindset. 00:32:40.46People do not vote from facts, they vote from their mindset.
José Maria Pimentel 00:32:44.46Yes, of perception. 00:32:45.60And it's very difficult to make these changes in a democracy. 00:32:50.00When you have an uneven starting point, people will create some expectations, which are legitimate to some extent, because they were born into that realm, and then it's very difficult. 00:32:58.84Politically, it's very difficult. 00:33:00.58But we digress the bit, let's go back to the quality of government and define as acting impartially as you define it, and with an autonomous bureaucracy, with capacity, with meritocratic hiring, and all of that. 00:33:15.14Although it's, as you say, empirical research proves that there is indeed a very high correlation between quality of government and development outcomes, there are also some puzzles. 00:33:24.62And one of them, I ask this because I know you have a paper on this, maybe the most obvious puzzle is that of China, right? 00:33:31.46Because China's, although they do have even historically a developed bureaucracy, it's not exactly this Weberian model that we are accustomed to in Europe, right? 00:33:39.92And you have an explanation for this. 00:33:41.36So you have an hypothesis for why, even without this model, they are being successful so far.
Bo Rothstein 00:33:46.86Now you are right, I mean, the economic performance of China is maybe the hardest nut to crack. 00:33:56.10Going back to Asimoglu and Robinson, they just throw up their hands and say, China will break. 00:34:01.72Now my background, I basically think of myself as an organizational theorist masquerading as a political scientist. 00:34:11.78So I think of myself very much in my previous life in organizational theory. 00:34:17.48What I found is that China has a very special type of public administration, which in the organizational literature has different names, the mission organization, the counter organization. 00:34:32.56And this combines high level of professionalism and competence with political loyalty. 00:34:42.54So it's a very different animal than the Weberian bureaucracy, but it has been found in other parts of the world. 00:34:51.86There is a famous book on public administration by Herbert Kaufman from the United States about the forest service in 1960s, which he explains the success that the problem was, you know, that this was before people had actually any of the communication tools that we now have. 00:35:16.78We're speaking about the 1950s and early 1960s. 00:35:20.18Now, how did the central administration in Washington manage to get their policies implemented in these gigantic countries out in the forest? 00:35:30.66Now, they did this by ideologically training the low-level bureaucrats into the mission of that organization. 00:35:38.98So it was not run in this Weberian sense by rules and regulations, but by a common understanding of how problems should be solved.
José Maria Pimentel 00:35:48.96Sort of an indoctrination in a sense. 00:35:50.94Yeah, you can say.
Bo Rothstein 00:35:52.28And I've seen this in Sweden also. 00:35:55.12I wrote my dissertation about this many years ago, the labor market administration. 00:36:00.08So it's a very special type of administration that is actually quite efficient when you have to implement a policy in an area that is very volatile. 00:36:13.08Because if the area is very volatile, like the labor market or nature, the forests, things happen that cannot be predicted, rules will not work because you cannot write so many rules. 00:36:25.64Instead, you have a system where the local bureaucrats are supposed to know the mission of the organization and act in the field as they think that the leadership would have acted had they had that type of information. 00:36:43.58And in organizational theory, this is quite well-known, how should I say, organizational animal, but it's completely unknown by most economists and political scientists. 00:36:54.68And my analysis is, this is exactly what China has. 00:36:59.06And it's quite efficient. 00:37:00.94It has one drawback. 00:37:02.82It doesn't work well with democracy, because in democracy, you're supposed to shift government and the loyal bureaucrats are supposed to implement another policy. 00:37:12.50Now, that cannot be done with this type of cadre administration, because they are so ideologically connected to their mission. 00:37:22.42So it's like a supertanker. 00:37:24.38You cannot shift it easily. 00:37:26.78But China doesn't have this problem because they don't have democracy. 00:37:30.30Yeah, that's interesting. 00:37:31.80I'm not saying this is, I mean, I'm just trying to explain this puzzle. 00:37:37.42It's a hypothesis. 00:37:37.98I can see that my colleagues in China are citing this little article more and more, because they think I found something. 00:37:47.04I, of course, tried this with my China expert colleagues also in Europe, and they think I have a point. 00:37:56.24Yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:37:57.10So your reasoning, to sum it up, is basically that they don't have autonomy, nor do they need it, because they are an autocracy, of course. 00:38:04.22And this, by the way, it's interesting, because if your argument is true, it might mean that it's even less likely that China will become a democracy, because they have this kind of a barrier. 00:38:12.26But anyway, so I understand that part. 00:38:13.76It makes complete sense.
Bo Rothstein 00:38:15.86Just one thing. 00:38:16.80They do have local autonomy. 00:38:18.96So they do have autonomy how to solve the local problem. 00:38:22.82But they are supposed to solve it like the leadership would have solved it, had they had this local information. 00:38:29.60If they don't do this, they are basically sacked on fire.
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:32.58Yeah. 00:38:32.74I think, yeah.
Bo Rothstein 00:38:33.66So it's not like they are machine bureaucrats. 00:38:36.28Yeah, of course. 00:38:36.82That have to, sort of, in a machine-like way, follow established rules. 00:38:41.02No, no.
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:41.72So I understand that part, and I think it's quite convincing. 00:38:44.38My thought here is, where does competence come from in this system?
Bo Rothstein 00:38:48.26It comes from, if you actually look at it, they train their bureaucrats very much. 00:38:54.52The competition for getting into those schools where you become a party bureaucrat is enormous. 00:39:01.74You know, they have, like, 50,000 for every place. 00:39:05.80So that is a huge, it's, yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:39:08.14So they can actually pick the good brains.
Bo Rothstein 00:39:11.94They can do that. 00:39:13.00So I think it's not only party loyalty that works here. 00:39:17.00It's both party loyalty, of course. 00:39:20.40You can't do things that the party don't want. 00:39:23.00But it's also a high level of technical competence, for example.
José Maria Pimentel 00:39:46.24When one thinks of a country so different as China, and even with your explanation, it's almost impossible not to think about the role of culture, right? 00:39:54.36And I'm thinking, you mentioned the organizational structure, and actually I had a previous guest who you might, whose name you might know is called Fons Trompernars. 00:40:02.70He's Dutch, and he has, he's an organizational theorist, and he has this book about cultural differences. 00:40:07.98And his book was actually written in the 80s. 00:40:09.80So the main focus was not yet on China, but on Japan. 00:40:12.24So the whole thing was about how companies in Japan were ruled in a different way. 00:40:17.14And what it tries to explain is that they are more collectivistic, which is a different model, but was still working well. 00:40:23.62And it's to some extent what we see also in China. 00:40:27.00And I'm thinking, might that also help explain what's going on in the government there?
Bo Rothstein 00:40:32.56I don't know. 00:40:33.18I mean, I have found this organizational model both in the United States and Sweden, and it
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:38.32worked there for quite a bit. 00:40:39.90But it was an exception there, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:40:41.58Yeah, but these were quite two very important public administrations. 00:40:47.20Secondly, around the world, you now see people who have left China who run businesses, small businesses, big businesses. 00:40:55.64They seem not to have a problem to adjust to the Western culture. 00:41:01.42So I don't know what to do with... 00:41:03.46I'm an institutionalist. 00:41:06.06I don't know what to do with cultural explanation. 00:41:09.30I mean, people are not cultural dopes. 00:41:11.60I think cultural explanations, they are simply too structural.
José Maria Pimentel 00:41:15.58No, that's true. 00:41:16.22It's a bit like the country size that we were talking about before. 00:41:19.56Yeah, you can't... 00:41:20.36But that doesn't mean that they are wrong, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:41:22.50Not necessarily, but I don't think they are so convincing. 00:41:26.28For example, I'm arguing for that people around the world seem to have a quite common understanding of what should count as corruption and quality of government. 00:41:37.26In countries with a high level of corruption, people do not internalize corruption as okay. 00:41:44.58This is very clear from the Afrobarometer, for example. 00:41:47.52I've had data from many African countries that are highly corrupt. 00:41:51.66When you describe corruption to them in this survey, they say this is wrong and should be punished. 00:41:57.64So I'm not so taken by cultural explanations here. 00:42:04.26Basically, cultural explanation, they say, what happens, happens because it happened before. 00:42:10.18That's not much of an explanation. 00:42:11.74It's basically just a repetition of the data. 00:42:13.94There is basically no distance between the dependent and the independent variable here.
José Maria Pimentel 00:42:20.92Well, there is if you can conceptualize it. 00:42:23.16So there are a lot of aspects of culture, like collectivism versus individualism, moral universalism. 00:42:28.58So if you're able to conceptualize it, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but it's not very different from the quality of government as impartiality, in a sense. 00:42:36.64So what you've done is be able to conceptualize it in a sense that you're able to differentiate it from the outcome. 00:42:42.90And without doing it, you would be measuring the outcome. 00:42:44.92But because you're able to define it as something different and here in China...
Bo Rothstein 00:42:49.78I mean, if you take a reasonably low-corrupt country like Sweden, we have had some very big corruption scandals when Swedish companies go and do business in more corrupt countries. 00:43:02.02So I think people adjust very quickly to the new thing here. 00:43:07.76And they do this because they feel that if we don't pay the bribe, we will lose the contract because some other company will pay the bribe.
José Maria Pimentel 00:43:16.00Institutions rule culture instead of the other way around. 00:43:18.36Yeah, I think so. 00:43:22.20Let me go back to a point I think you've made already twice, but it's important enough to highlight because there's a debate there regarding whether corruption is universal or not, or is country-specific or culture-specific. 00:43:32.50And the way you interpret the data is that it means that people all around the world have a similar perception of a similar idea of what's corrupt or not, regardless of what happens in the way they adjust to their day-to-day environment, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:43:46.20Yeah, I cite my colleagues, Dan Weedman, who have studied very, very remote villages in India. 00:43:55.38And he finds that what they are longing for is the barbarian bureaucrat to come and fix the situation.
José Maria Pimentel 00:44:01.44Of course, they don't use that expression, I guess.
Bo Rothstein 00:44:04.58No, but if you speak with anthropologists, they say, oh, no, you cannot have a universal definition. 00:44:11.84It's very different. 00:44:13.44And I say, well, OK, then you will have a definition of corruption per country or per city or per region or per village. 00:44:22.78And it's not the case that you can then prescribe exactly the same policy for every country or region or city. 00:44:35.28You have to know that specific case. 00:44:38.84And here I think we, as social scientists, should think like medical doctors. 00:44:44.00Now, I happen to have a lot of friends who are medical doctors. 00:44:47.68And I found out one interesting thing quite a number of years ago. 00:44:51.82They don't really like if you ask them about the medical problem you have. 00:44:56.44They don't want to say anything. 00:44:58.68And first, I thought this was strange because they are my friends. 00:45:01.86But then they explained to me, no, they said, it will be unethical for me to say something about your problem without first closely examining you and taking all the tests. 00:45:14.98Why? 00:45:15.80Because, you know, every patient is in some way unique. 00:45:20.94Take a simple case. 00:45:22.12We know that antibiotic works. 00:45:24.76But there are people who are seriously allergic. 00:45:28.16And you have to know this. 00:45:29.80And this is how I think we should think about policies against corruption and low quality of government. 00:45:36.08We can produce some universal knowledge. 00:45:40.42But, of course, you cannot implement this like a blueprint everywhere. 00:45:45.56You have to, we have to collaborate with people who have specific knowledge about that country or that region or city or village. 00:45:54.76Like you do in medicine. 00:45:56.00So you have to closely examine the case before you cannot come from, I'm a generalist, but I don't think I could come to any place with a prescription without first having collaborated with someone who really knows that specific case very well.
José Maria Pimentel 00:46:13.88The analogy with medicine is actually a pertinent one because they are, medicine and the social sciences have a lot of things in common. 00:46:20.18You have many variables to take account of. 00:46:21.88And that's the reason why both work with probabilities and correlations and not with, and they're not deterministic, right?
Bo Rothstein 00:46:27.80And we work with experiments also.
José Maria Pimentel 00:46:30.02And with experiments, yeah. 00:46:31.24Of course, they are most, more difficult to find in the social sciences.
Bo Rothstein 00:46:34.34Yeah, we've done quite a number of experiments, yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:46:38.34We've established, I think, right in the onset of the conversation that quality of government is key to development. 00:46:44.54But I guess that's not equally determined to all outcomes, right? 00:46:47.96So if you, let's say we go to a country which is a democracy, but has low quality of government or has a lower quality of government than it has a quality of democracy. 00:46:58.18What outcomes would be severely compromised there? 00:47:01.74And what outcomes could we expect to still find, despite the ineffective government, to find somewhat achieved? 00:47:09.28It's a difficult question to answer, I know.
Bo Rothstein 00:47:10.92Yeah, it's difficult. 00:47:11.74But you can obviously have, to some extent, quite impressive economic growth without high quality of government. 00:47:22.48Italy in the 1960s, for example, or from 1955 until 1973, a fantastic economic growth.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:31.42Or Brazil, I'm thinking in the early 2000s, yeah. 00:47:34.92And this can be driven by all kinds of things.
Bo Rothstein 00:47:38.66In the Italian case, you had enormous amount of labor force that were willing to work for very little money, from the South, for example, and many other cases. 00:47:47.60But then comes, like, a tipping point where it doesn't work anymore. 00:47:51.94And I've just been reading a book by two economists about the Italian situation. 00:47:58.32Italy, you know, has had very, very low growth the last 25 years, one of the lowest in Europe. 00:48:03.24And they explained this by the lack of meritocracy, both in the public sector and in the private sector. 00:48:11.36And also, what we would define, economists would use the word rent-seeking, and we would use the word corporatism, that very strong lobby groups can force regulations that benefit them, but are detrimental to society as a whole. 00:48:27.98So, you can grow to a certain level, but then it stops because you lack the quality of government factors that are important for becoming Denmark, so to say.
José Maria Pimentel 00:48:39.80So, you can grow because that growth is not, of course, I mean, in a market economy, not entirely dependent on government, but then at some point, the lack of steering will, or the lack of...
Bo Rothstein 00:48:50.06Yeah, it will hit back. 00:48:51.64And then it's very, very, it's very difficult to get out of this system, of course.
José Maria Pimentel 00:48:56.18And what are the outcomes that are most severely compromised by low quality of government? 00:49:00.62Long-term policies would be my intuition, but...
Bo Rothstein 00:49:03.22Low, I think the major effect of low quality of government is that it destroys social trust, or social capital. 00:49:13.42Yeah. 00:49:13.58Which I think, I actually, I came to this research from research in social capital and social trust. 00:49:21.46I was recruited by an American colleague, Robert Putnam, in the mid-1990s to a project about this, and I came to the same conclusion as he, that social capital, social trust is a kind of basic variable that explains most other things, and that is a very important asset to have for a society. 00:49:45.04However, I came to a completely different understanding of how social capital is generated. 00:49:51.60His argument was that it was generated by people being active in voluntary associations. 00:49:57.16And we found no evidence at all for this. 00:50:01.26Nothing. 00:50:02.04So we came, and I say we, because I work with Dick Lynn Stolle and other colleagues, we came to a difficult situation. 00:50:10.12There was a new concept, social trust, social capital. 00:50:13.08We could show that it had an enormous importance for many valued outcomes, but the main theory how it was generated didn't work. 00:50:23.12And so we decided to sort of turn the tables and see, maybe it doesn't come from below, maybe it came from above. 00:50:31.52And bam, we found it. 00:50:33.22So it's very clear that when people make up their mind, if they think other people in general can be trusted, the perceptions of people who work in the public sector is very important. 00:50:47.80We have this from experiments, survey data, case studies, whatever.
José Maria Pimentel 00:50:52.96So basically what you're saying is that it's not social capital, which leads to quality of government. 00:50:57.96It's quality of government, which leads to social capital, which leads meaning, which improves social capital.
Bo Rothstein 00:51:02.62Yeah. 00:51:02.86That is very clear. 00:51:04.10There is a handbook by my colleague and co-author, Ricky Slainer, where there is a very good chapter by a Korean scholar, Sung Joo, that actually he summarized the argument very nicely. 00:51:18.86No, it's very clear that the Chinese proverb is correct. 00:51:22.86And the theory runs, we have an article that has just been accepted by the American Journal of Political Science, where we have run another experiment showing this. 00:51:37.08It's very clear that when people perceive that those who are responsible for the rules of the game are cheating or dishonest. 00:51:45.80And so they lose trust, not only in them, but in people in general. 00:51:50.36And I think it works like this. 00:51:52.36So if you live in a society where you find or your knowledge or mindset is that teachers, principals, public health doctors, policemen, judges, university professors, they are dishonest, incompetent, corrupt. 00:52:13.22You will make three inferences. 00:52:15.68One is, you will say, if you cannot trust people like them, why should you trust people in general in this society? 00:52:23.12They have basically almost taken an oath that they shouldn't just look out for their own interests, but for the public. 00:52:29.60Secondly, you will realize that most people in such a society, in order to get what they need, health care, schools for their kids, protection, they will have to be engaged in all kinds of shady things, and thus they cannot be trusted. 00:52:45.30And the third thing that will happen is that you yourself will realize that, you know, for you to get what you need in life, you will also have to become a dishonest person. 00:52:54.76And if you cannot be trusted as an honest person yourself, why should other people in your society be trusted? 00:53:00.86So I think this is the main bad effect of low quality of government, is destroy social trust. 00:53:07.74There are other bad effects, of course, but this is the main effect.
José Maria Pimentel 00:53:11.54So you think that the main effect of low quality of government is destroying social trust, and the main cause of social trust is quality of government, so the main determinant? 00:53:20.40So you're, I mean, you're, how can I put this? 00:53:22.46I believe the research, of course, and your argument is persuasive, but isn't that also putting too much weight on government? 00:53:29.34Do you understand why I'm trying to get it? 00:53:30.58So he's making it, it seems like the government is what leads to everything in a, in, or at least which it's the main cause of one of the most important dimensions of life in society, which is trust.
Bo Rothstein 00:53:39.90You can be a very nice, trustworthy, honest person in a high corrupt society, but only towards your close friends and family. 00:53:50.48You will have particularized trust, not generalized trust.
José Maria Pimentel 00:53:54.20Yes, which is what happens exactly in low social.
Bo Rothstein 00:53:57.32So this, I mean, this was discovered many, many years ago in the famous book by Edward Banfield, when he started this small Italian village in the South. 00:54:08.14Yeah. 00:54:09.06The moral basis of bad development or something of that is the title. 00:54:14.48You know, government is not only the national state. 00:54:19.32I think you would have the same effect if you find bad government in your local village. 00:54:27.14I did an article with an anthropologist. 00:54:31.92We used the human relation archive at Yale that has thousands and thousands of anthropological studies. 00:54:40.92And to our surprise, we found instances of corrupt practices also in indigenous societies, in tribes. 00:54:52.14And we couldn't figure out, you know, how can, what is this? 00:54:56.46There is no state. 00:54:58.80But our thinking was like this, what every society, no matter how, you're not supposed to use the word primitive, but let's do it. 00:55:08.28So in a very primitive tribal society, there has to be some people who take care of public goods, defense, some minimal type of justice, irrigation, water, taking care of infants, whatever. 00:55:25.40Now, what people universally think is unacceptable, corrupt, is when those who are set to handle the public goods, transform them into their private goods. 00:55:40.36And this can happen in a very small community, right? 00:55:43.20In a small club. 00:55:44.44I mean, it can happen. 00:55:45.54It's not necessarily that, you know, it's the national state. 00:55:49.52I think if you, even in low corrupt Sweden now, or reasonably low corrupt, there are now a lot of reports that in certain immigrant areas, powerful families as clans are basically wielding a lot of power.
José Maria Pimentel 00:56:05.18And I think, I mean, tell me if you agree with this, but I think that could also apply to even companies and organizations, right? 00:56:11.74So even within, as a company gets larger, when it's not like a family owned company, so it's recruiting from the outside, it can be run in a partial or an impartial way, right? 00:56:22.52So that will also tend to influence the way.
Bo Rothstein 00:56:24.84This is what these two economists have written, this great book about Italy, I can send you the reference, are saying why those family companies cannot, in so many cases, compete on the international level. 00:56:38.68They do not recruit the most competent ones, it's their nephews who positions. 00:56:45.38And there is an excellent number of papers by a Canadian economist, John Heliwell, some of them are very much about what happens in companies. 00:56:57.76And he can show very much that if you think that your companies run in a fair and just manner, that has a very important effect on your feelings of trust and happiness.
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:08.98And by the way, is there any research done cross-country comparing corruption in the private sector, in the public sector? 00:57:16.52Not that I really know about.
Bo Rothstein 00:57:18.70I think quality of government, you know, it doesn't include corruption within companies, because we think this is ordinary criminality or breaches of trust. 00:57:29.08One of the parties in a corrupt dealing has to be in the government. 00:57:33.76Otherwise, we don't think of it as corruption.
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:36.00But you would think of it as lack of impartiality, wouldn't you? 00:57:39.06Yes, yeah.
Bo Rothstein 00:57:39.72But a private company doesn't have, if you own a company, you don't have to follow rules of impartiality. 00:57:46.60You can employ whoever you want. 00:57:48.74You can employ people who you think are beautiful or share your religion or come from the same village as you. 00:57:57.40You don't have to follow rules of impartiality. 00:57:59.88That is not how the market economy works.
José Maria Pimentel 00:58:01.96No, of course, you don't have to, but as you were saying before, an impartially, impartially in the sense of meritocratic run company would tend to lead to development in the same way that an impartially.
Bo Rothstein 00:58:14.22I would guess that, you know, I'm not a business economist, but I would guess that if you try to recruit people who are more competent, that would sort of increase the likelihood that the company would go well. 00:58:29.64But many companies don't do that. 00:58:32.46They want people like themselves. 00:58:34.22There is a famous story of the Ericsson company in Stockholm, who was 15 years ago big on mobile phones.
José Maria Pimentel 00:58:45.18Yes, yes. 00:58:45.62I remember you.
Bo Rothstein 00:58:46.40And so they sent their engineers to a fair in Frankfurt and they found the first prototype of the iPhone there. 00:58:56.40And they looked at it and came back to Stockholm and said, no, this is useless. 00:59:02.22This phone will not work. 00:59:03.60This is hopeless. 00:59:04.84We should not go there. 00:59:06.18All of them came from the same technical school in Stockholm.
José Maria Pimentel 00:59:13.92They might as well have sent just one person to it.
Bo Rothstein 00:59:16.00They have recruited people like themselves. 00:59:17.68There was no one who was saying, well, maybe we should take a second look or so. 00:59:22.08And now they don't produce any phones anymore. 00:59:24.36How many billion iPhones have been sold? 00:59:27.22Is it 200 or something? 00:59:29.76I don't know. 00:59:31.74Such things happen in private companies, you know. 00:59:34.44You recruit people who are like you because you think they are the easiest ones to work with and they will understand you. 00:59:42.20Sociality is not a big thing, I think, in the private sector.
José Maria Pimentel 00:59:46.82Let's go back to the democracy, which is where we started our conversation on, because that leads us into maybe some solutions. 00:59:54.02You mentioned already that there's no panacea, of course, but you mentioned right in the in the beginning that there are some aspects of democracy which might go counter to quality of government, especially in young democracies or underdeveloped. 01:00:06.58But there are, of course, those are the more intuitive aspects of democracy which promote quality of government. 01:00:12.62The most obvious one is accountability in the sense of you being able to to sack the government and put someone else or some other party in its place. 01:00:20.02But there are some other dimensions like checks and balances, free media, other dimensions of democracy that that promote quality of government. 01:00:27.20What do you think are the most important or put in a different way? 01:00:30.90If one wants to improve the quality of government in a country, starting on the input side, starting on the democracy side, what should be the main priorities?
Bo Rothstein 01:00:40.38Transparency in control over party finance.
José Maria Pimentel 01:00:43.20It's interesting you mentioned that because I always have the doubt of whether transparency is a dimension of democracy or of quality of government. 01:00:50.24You put it on the democracy side.
Bo Rothstein 01:00:51.74Yeah, I would. 01:00:53.20Because if you don't have transparency, you cannot know what the government have done. 01:00:59.16If you cannot get the figures or the documents and so on. 01:01:02.30Sure. 01:01:02.76No, no, I understand. 01:01:03.48So I think transparency is a central part of democracy. 01:01:09.04How could journalists report if they couldn't get access to information and documents? 01:01:17.06So I think transparency and also that you find some way to have that the political parties cannot plunder the public coffers. 01:01:28.38That seems to be very important. 01:01:30.62Elections. 01:01:31.18You know, this book by Aachen and Bartels, Democracy for Realism, doesn't give a very good picture of the possibility for voters to actually do what they are supposed to do. 01:01:45.10They are too short-sighted, the issues are too complicated, and they are too tribal.
José Maria Pimentel 01:01:51.38So would you say in that sense that horizontal accountability is more important? 01:01:55.38So basically, separation of powers, the media? 01:01:59.10Yeah.
Bo Rothstein 01:01:59.42I mean, basically, I lost trust in this when Trump was elected. 01:02:03.80Yeah. 01:02:05.22If you ask me personally, that such a person could be elected to this very important position made me lose trust in elections. 01:02:17.00Yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 01:02:17.18That's true. 01:02:17.60But wouldn't you say that the way the events ran their course actually proved that democracy worked as it should? 01:02:23.46Because the way... 01:02:24.00I don't remember who... 01:02:24.82The game is not over. 01:02:26.54Yeah. 01:02:26.90And I don't know... 01:02:28.54I should know who said this in the first place. 01:02:30.14I don't know, actually. 01:02:31.36But someone said quite rightly that the main benefit of democracy is not putting the right guys there. 01:02:36.86He's being able to take the wrong guys out. 01:02:40.56And that's exactly what happened, right? 01:02:42.30But he might come back. 01:02:43.90Yeah. 01:02:44.10He might come back. 01:02:44.88Yeah. 01:02:45.00Or someone else like him. 01:02:46.36Yeah. 01:02:46.84Or even worse. 01:02:48.44Yeah. 01:02:49.04That's true. 01:02:49.96But the research is strong on this link between transparency and the improved ability of democracy to lead to quality of government?
Bo Rothstein 01:02:58.56I would say so, yeah. 01:02:59.96I don't have the numbers in my hand. 01:03:02.64But it also makes it very important. 01:03:07.56I mean, take my case in Sweden. 01:03:09.74Anyone, anyone can come to my office and say, I would like to see Professor Rothstein's travel bills for the last five years. 01:03:17.36And our head of the department are not allowed to even ask for why. 01:03:24.64They're just supposed to present the papers. 01:03:27.36And of course, knowing this, people like I are knowing this, you are very careful how you spend the public money. 01:03:34.56Yeah, of course. 01:03:35.78I would, of course, be as careful, even if this didn't exist. 01:03:40.26But I guess many of my colleagues wouldn't be. 01:03:42.88No, I'm kidding. 01:03:44.90But this puts, knowing that this can happen, and it happens, of course, makes you think twice before doing things even in the gray.
José Maria Pimentel 01:03:56.00I mean, for me, who have been running the Quality of Government Institute, I had to explain to my young colleagues that if you're in such an operation, you cannot do things even in the gray. 01:04:05.20Nothing.
Bo Rothstein 01:04:08.12You have to be cleaner than Jesus or whatever. 01:04:14.68But this is, of course, important. 01:04:17.80I mean, it would be a big thing if journalists would find out that, say, you have a political science operation that is promoting democracy that is run like autocracy, for example. 01:04:31.66That wouldn't look nice. 01:04:33.82Or you have an anti-corruption research operation that are doing bad things with public money. 01:04:40.18That wouldn't be nice.
José Maria Pimentel 01:04:41.44Yes, an anti-corruption agency run entirely by a single family, for instance. 01:04:47.64I understand you're saying that looking at the case of Sweden, but from a reform standpoint, I'm a big defender of increased transparency, don't get me wrong, but just increased transparency alone might not be enough, right? 01:05:00.06Because if you lack enough free media and wide readership and a civil society willing to engage and social trust, and then we are back to the beginning. 01:05:10.88So I think I know what to say after this. 01:05:13.10But those are also preconditions to citizens being able to, citizens and the media being able to, and the other parties being able to exert that accountability, right?
Bo Rothstein 01:05:22.64Well, there are other things that are important. 01:05:24.74In my latest book, I point at five things. 01:05:28.46So having national audit system that is professional and that also publishes broadly their reports seems to be important. 01:05:39.94Meritocracy in itself improves the system. 01:05:44.28You can say it's too close to quality of government, but from a policy perspective, it's not. 01:05:50.28You can, as you can have observers checking if the elections are going in the right way or done in the right way, you could have international observers taking part in the recruitment of high-level civil servants, for example. 01:06:09.14So you would be sure that they were not only recruited because they belong to the right party and so on. 01:06:15.56Broad-based universal free education seems to be very important. 01:06:22.18And I was surprised, but it's very clear that gender equality has a positive effect. 01:06:30.24Now, many are surprised by this, saying, why are women more honest or so than men? 01:06:36.14Well, I say, according to the Swedish health care law, if you are a doctor, you are allowed to prescribe a drug or a treatment based on two grounds. 01:06:47.76One is scientific knowledge, but the other is proven experience. 01:06:52.68So you don't know why people get well, but they do. 01:06:55.74That is how I think about gender equality here.
José Maria Pimentel 01:06:58.78That's how medicine works for a long time.
Bo Rothstein 01:07:01.86Yeah, but hey, look at criminality. 01:07:04.62Open any prison in the world. 01:07:07.02That's an easy one, yes. 01:07:08.00And take a look at who is there for serious crime. 01:07:11.74And you will find out 96% on them. 01:07:14.64Now, corruption is also, for the most part, illegal. 01:07:19.64Why wouldn't we see the same there? 01:07:22.06That's an interesting point. 01:07:23.38Why this is so, I don't know. 01:07:25.16I'm not a neurobiologist.
José Maria Pimentel 01:07:27.74Or an evolutionary psychologist. 01:07:29.26I'm not supposed to know this. 01:07:29.74Or an evolutionary psychologist.
Bo Rothstein 01:07:32.02But it's one way to think about gender equality here is in the following way, that most countries have, over the years, seriously discriminated women in the public sector when it comes to recruitment and promotion. 01:07:47.14Now, if a country says, well, this is bad, and we are now seriously, seriously going to do something about this, discrimination of women is absolutely not okay anymore. 01:07:58.42That is a very important signal about impassia. 01:08:02.24Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. 01:08:04.18Yeah. 01:08:04.66If you shouldn't discriminate based on gender, maybe you shouldn't discriminate on other grounds when you recruit people to or promote people in the public sector. 01:08:15.02I mean, there are a hundred different definitions of gender equality. 01:08:19.70But for me, impartiality is very important. 01:08:23.28It shouldn't play in a role if you're a man or a woman when you apply for a research grant or a position or a promotion. 01:08:31.26So for me, it's very centered around impartiality in the exercise of public power. 01:08:38.30In a country that takes a serious step here, and some countries have done this, sends out a very important signal about impartiality. 01:08:47.10I mean, if you take universal education, for example, when it was established in the late 19th century, it was then a revolution in many countries that also girls should get education. 01:09:01.82And even more so that they were to be educated together with the boys. 01:09:06.56That was a serious revolution for gender equality, maybe one of the most important ones. 01:09:13.04Italy here is very interesting when it comes to education. 01:09:16.72Italy in the 1860s, when the country is united and established, gets a very radical educational reform. 01:09:25.94Every child should have three years free education. 01:09:28.84The policies implemented to the letter in the northern parts of the countries, hardly anything in the south. 01:09:34.54And we see the effects 150 years later.
José Maria Pimentel 01:09:37.52But why was that? 01:09:39.14Why wasn't it implemented in the south?
Bo Rothstein 01:09:41.18Because of clientelism, corruption, lack of ambitions. 01:09:46.02Yeah, the usual bad things.
José Maria Pimentel 01:09:46.80Because of prior institutional conditions. 01:09:49.30Yes, yes, yes, yes. 01:09:50.36And we see the effects 150 years later. 01:09:53.52And that idea of gender equality is interesting because it can work in two ways. 01:09:58.78It can work because it signals impartiality, as you were saying. 01:10:02.50It can also work when we are analyzing it because it's heavily correlated with other improvements in impartiality, which we are not measuring, right? 01:10:09.60Yeah. 01:10:10.80So that's, yeah, that's interesting. 01:10:12.50That's a puzzle in and of itself.
Bo Rothstein 01:10:13.72It's also important to establish reasonable professional tax administration and to tax the people. 01:10:21.56One finding we have from ethnographic data that surprised us was that we had research assistants in African, highly corrupt African countries interviewing mid-level people, not the poorest one, not the elite, but say heads of school principals, heads of local health services and so on. 01:10:43.70They came back with a very interesting report, several of them, they said, well, they don't have a different idea of corruption than we do in Sweden. 01:10:54.02They think it's bad. 01:10:55.08They think it seriously hurts their countries. 01:10:57.26Then two of our research assistants were a little smart because they said, well, if people think like you that corruption is really bad and that it hurts the country, why isn't there more protest? 01:11:08.62And then came from many, a very interesting answer of, for many of our informants, it's not my money. 01:11:15.56They don't pay any taxes. 01:11:16.84They don't pay any wage tax. 01:11:19.44They don't pay any property tax. 01:11:21.52They pay some trade taxes, but you don't feel that so much. 01:11:24.92So what the political elite is doing by maybe plundering natural resources or stealing aid money, it's bad, but they don't care because it's not their money. 01:11:33.68But in a country like Denmark, where you pay extremely high taxes, you care a lot about your money. 01:11:42.02Yes.
José Maria Pimentel 01:11:42.48Of course, in the other case, it's also your money, but it's less obvious. 01:11:45.76It's less obvious, yeah.
Bo Rothstein 01:11:47.66It seems quite important. 01:11:50.12I don't argue for very high taxes on the Danish level, but still, it seems very important to get the functioning tax administration.
José Maria Pimentel 01:11:58.46That's interesting. 01:11:59.24It makes people more than money.
Bo Rothstein 01:12:00.72Yeah, if it's not your money, why should you care? 01:12:03.62Yeah, yeah. 01:12:04.78So then you get some political mobilization, hopefully against corruption.
José Maria Pimentel 01:12:09.88That's quite interesting. 01:12:11.38Buu, this was a very interesting conversation, as I was expecting. 01:12:14.92Very nice. 01:12:15.58I'm mindful of your time, so I'll let you go. 01:12:17.92Yeah. 01:12:18.44Was there anything I didn't ask that you wanted to say about this topic?
Bo Rothstein 01:12:22.36No. 01:12:23.98No, this has been a very building the Quality of Government Institute, and that it's now running without me, basically. 01:12:33.56I'm just a senior consultant there.
José Maria Pimentel 01:12:36.36It has been a great... 01:12:39.76It's a hell of a project, yes.
Bo Rothstein 01:12:41.06Yeah. 01:12:41.66And now we have money for another four or five years, so it's been really good. 01:12:47.68And to work with my... 01:12:48.84And I should say, I say we all the time, but many of the research results I present are not mine. 01:12:54.96They are from my very able and talented colleagues in this operation.
José Maria Pimentel 01:12:59.22True. 01:12:59.44And that's the way science works, so that's all right. 01:13:02.54Yeah. 01:13:02.68Yeah. 01:13:02.82You are about 30 people, if I'm not wrong, right? 01:13:05.26Yeah. 01:13:05.40In the Quality of Government Institute. 01:13:07.00Yeah. 01:13:07.74Yeah.
Bo Rothstein 01:13:08.28So it's a... 01:13:09.14I think next to the World Bank, we are the largest on a global scale on this specific topic. 01:13:16.96Yeah. 01:13:17.06Wow. 01:13:17.38Actually. 01:13:18.32Yeah, I got a question from... 01:13:20.66I was at Stanford, and I was... 01:13:23.58Francis Fukuyama invited me to give a talk for his grad students, and I presented our research, and one of them...
José Maria Pimentel 01:13:31.96Of course, he has a definition different from yours, of course. 01:13:34.90We didn't talk about that. 01:13:36.34Yeah. 01:13:36.62Yeah.
Bo Rothstein 01:13:37.44We talked a lot about that. 01:13:39.04Yeah. 01:13:39.54I admire him a lot. 01:13:41.32But she came up to me and said, Professor Rothstein, I don't get this. 01:13:45.54A bunch of Swedes studying corruption. 01:13:48.76What do you know about corruption? 01:13:50.04It sounds like a bunch of nuns running a strip club.
José Maria Pimentel 01:13:53.80You know, I thought the same when I first came across.
Bo Rothstein 01:13:57.66But my only defense is this, that maybe... 01:14:01.10Maybe if you are in the middle of the forest, you don't see the trees.
José Maria Pimentel 01:14:05.44Yeah. 01:14:07.16That's true.
Bo Rothstein 01:14:07.64If you are a little outside the forest, you can see the trees, maybe. 01:14:11.58But I don't know.
José Maria Pimentel 01:14:12.32But it was fun. 01:14:14.28No, no, and it's true. 01:14:15.66Thanks a lot for your availability. 01:14:16.78Thank you. 01:14:17.42Thank you. 01:14:17.74It was great. 01:14:18.26My pleasure. 01:14:19.74Este episódio foi editado por Hugo Oliveira. 01:14:22.72Contribua para a continuidade e crescimento deste projeto no site 45curauspodcast.com. 01:14:27.86Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou através do Patreon, bem como os benefícios associados a cada modalidade. 01:14:38.08Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou até o primeiro lugar. 01:14:44.46Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou até o primeiro lugar. 01:14:45.46Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou até o primeiro lugar. 01:14:46.42Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou até o primeiro lugar.