Independent and competing agencies : An effective way to control government
- Schelker, Mark University of Fribourg
- Eichenberger, Reiner University of Fribourg
-
2007
Published in:
- Public Choice. - 2007, vol. 130, p. 79-98
English
Controlling government is a primary focus of the politico-economic literature. Recently, various political institutions have been analyzed from this perspective, most importantly balanced budget rules, fiscal federalism, and direct democracy. However, one type of institution has been neglected so far: elected competitors to the government. Such institutional competition between the government and an independent agency can be found at the Swiss local level, where finance commissions compete with the government. In some parts of Switzerland, local finance commissions can ex ante criticize government projects and bring alternative policy proposals onto the political agenda, which are then voted on by the citizens. Thus, they become strong competitors to the government. We econometrically investigate this institutional setting by comparing the 26 Swiss cantons.We find the power of the local finance commission to have an economically relevant, statistically significant and robust negative effect on the tax burden and on public expenditures.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
- Department
- Département d'économie politique
- Language
-
- English
- Classification
- Economics
- License
- License undefined
- Identifiers
-
- RERO DOC 330476
- DOI 10.1007/s11127-006-9073-5
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/309399
Statistics
Document views: 41
File downloads:
- 2007_schelker_independent.pdf: 59