IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/imfstp/vy2006isip5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Constraints and Public Support for Market Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Raj M. Desai

    (International Monetary Fund)

  • Anders Olofsgård

    (International Monetary Fund)

Abstract

As concerns of "reform fatigue" in lower- and middle-income countries have become more widespread, so has the search for ways of boosting support for market-oriented reforms. Although the effects of political institutions on reform results have been extensively analyzed, there has been relatively little investigation of their effects on public opinion. We argue that constitutional and extra-constitutional reforms that place limits on the discretionary authority of public officials and enable voters to monitor, reward, and sanction politicians can enhance the legitimacy of market reforms. We present a voting model with asymmetric information to illustrate that these formal-legal reforms provide a credible signal of reformers' commitments. Using panel data based on public opinion barometers from Eastern Europe and Latin America, we examine the effects of political authority on public support for markets. We find that constraints on the power of the executive branch boost support for markets but that this effect declines as the reform process matures. Copyright 2006, International Monetary Fund

Suggested Citation

  • Raj M. Desai & Anders Olofsgård, 2006. "Political Constraints and Public Support for Market Reform," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(si), pages 1-5.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:imfstp:v::y:2006:i:si:p:5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2006/03/pdf/desai.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grosfeld, Irena & Senik, Claudia, 2008. "The Emerging Aversion to Inequality. Evidence from Poland 1992-2005," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 0805, CEPREMAP.
    2. Irena Grosfeld & Claudia Senik, 2010. "The emerging aversion to inequality," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 18(1), pages 1-26, January.
    3. Pauline Grosjean & Frantisek Ricka & Claudia Senik, 2011. "Learning, Political Attitudes and the Crisis in Transition Countries," Discussion Papers 2011-16, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    4. Sirovátka, Tomáš & Guzi, Martin & Saxonberg, Steve, 2019. "Support for Market Economy Principles in European Post-Communist Countries during 1999–2008," MPRA Paper 97585, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Irena Grosfeld & Claudia Senik, 2009. "The emerging aversion to inequality - Evidence from long subjective data," PSE Working Papers halshs-00586788, HAL.
    6. Apolte, Thomas & Peters, Heiko, 2009. "Governance, Demokratie und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in den ehemals sozialistischen Staaten," IÖB-Diskussionspapiere 1/09, University of Münster, Institute for Economic Education.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:imfstp:v::y:2006:i:si:p:5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.