Category Archives for India

Why ‘I-Paid-A-Bribe’ Worked in India but Failed in China

source: China Daily

Interesting paper by Yuen Yuen Ang, Political Scientist at the University of Michigan:

Authoritarian states restrain online activism not only through repression and censorship, but also by indirectly weakening the ability of netizens to self-govern and constructively engage the state. I demonstrate this argument by comparing I-Paid-A-Bribe (IPAB) — a crowd-sourcing platform that collects anonymous reports of petty bribery — in India and China. Whereas IPAB originated and has thrived in India, a copycat effort in China fizzled out within months. Contrary to those who attribute China’s failed outcome to repression, I find that even before authorities shut down IPAB, the sites were already plagued by internal organizational problems that were comparatively absent in India. The study tempers expectations about the revolutionary effects of new media in mobilizing contention and checking corruption in the absence of a strong civil society.

And a brief video with Yuen Yuen

Also read

I Paid a Bribe. So What? 

Open Government and Democracy

Accountability of Local and State Governments in India: an Overview of Recent Research

Picture by Bryce Edwards on Flickr.

Picture by Bryce Edwards on Flickr.

By Dilip Mookherjee (2012)

The lecture is organized as follows. The next section will start by discussing the notion of accountability, followed by an introduction to the Downsian theory of electoral competition. This serves as a convenient departure point for classifying di erent sources of accountability failures in actual political systems. Subsequent sections deal with each of these in turn: limited voter participation and awareness; ideology, honesty and competence of political parties and electoral candidates; capture by elites; clientelism and vote-buying. Each section starts by explaining the relevant departure from the Downsian framework, and then reviews available empirical evidence in the Indian context for each of these possible distortions’,besides effects of related policy interventions. The fi nal section summarizes the lessons learnt, and the fresh questions that they raise.

Read full paper here [PDF].