Does economic liberalization increase government accountability?

This paper examines the impact of economic liberalization on government accountability. Using a country-level panel spanning 1900-2020 from the V-DEM dataset, we exploit discrete and sustained jumps in state ownership and control of the economy to identify instances of reforms toward economic libera...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of economic behavior & organization Vol. 237; p. 107143
Main Authors: Rayamajhee, Veeshan, March, Raymond J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 01.09.2025
Subjects:
Civil society
Economic liberalization
Government accountability
Media freedom
Property rights
Media freedom
P14
P16
Government accountability
Property rights
H11
Economic liberalization
Civil society
O11
O43
ISSN:0167-2681
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This paper examines the impact of economic liberalization on government accountability. Using a country-level panel spanning 1900-2020 from the V-DEM dataset, we exploit discrete and sustained jumps in state ownership and control of the economy to identify instances of reforms toward economic liberalization. We use a doubly-robust staggered difference-in-differences approach on stacked data and find a sizable and positive relationship between economic liberalization and government accountability. We further identify three channels through which capitalistic reforms improve government accountability: greater media independence and representation, stronger civil society participation, and broader inclusion of diverse elite groups, all of which impose checks on governmental power. Our results are robust to a host of robustness checks including exclusion of different geo-political regions and historical episodes as well as alternative treatment definitions.
ISSN:0167-2681
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107143