The government faces a principal–agent problem with lower-level state officers. Officers are often expected to use the state coercive capacity endowed to them to politically benefit the government. But officers can shirk from the government’s demands. An officer’s actions during bouts of large-scale and highly visible electoral violence reveal the officer’s type, thereby providing the government with the information necessary to solve its principal–agent problem for the future. The government holds officers who used their authority to perpetuate incumbent-instigated violence accountable through positive rewards, while holding officers who used their authority to perpetuate opposition-instigated violence accountable through negative sanctions. We find evidence in support of the theory using micro-level archival data on 2,500 local officer appointments and fine-grained satellite data on the locations of violence in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007 election. The Kenyan government was more likely to fire officials whose jurisdictions saw opposition-instigated violence that targeted government supporters. But we find the opposite result where violence was instigated by incumbent supporters: there, officers were less likely to be fired if violence occurred in their jurisdiction. Our results indicate that leaders can manipulate accountability processes after political violence to further politicize the state.

This article examines the subnational determinants of descriptive representation. Agency managers may be hesitant to hire women uniformly across all localities if they perceive geographic variation in role congruence, or the degree to which a position's duties match gender roles. We expect managerial perceptions to affect hiring patterns even after the adoption of a gender quota intended to improve descriptive representation, as managers will differentially hire women to meet the quota in localities where they perceive role congruence to be highest. Evidence from Kenya's most important security agency after the adoption of a gender quota supports the theory. Broadly, this article shows that aggregate quotas are at risk of being implemented in a way that undermines the spirit of the law. Slack in oversight pushes implementation to subnational areas where managers perceive the quota will be least disruptive, and ultimately, have the smallest effects on passive, let alone active, representation.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

points of GDP growth yearly (as it does across much of the globe) then human rights are again being usurped for the private gain of others. According to the authors, "corruption is about different forms of discrimination, and human rights are about one's right to remain free of discrimination" (p. 68). This is a book of great and lasting value to scholars and theorists. It also exhaustively examines the concepts of patrimonialism, patronage, clientelism, and state capture, and how each relates to and is equated with, contributes to, or depends on corrupt practices. A special chapter, originally published in this journal, focuses on "the Chinese exception" to discover why a corrupt, undemocratic country of immense size has been able to deliver higher living standards and lasting social benefits to its people despite the kinds of weak or questionable governance forms that militate against such progress in theory and, empirically, in the rest of the world. Rothstein and Varraich decide that Chinese "cadre" management is a key part of the answer. Instead of participatory governance, Chinese communism has substituted indoctrination (a word the authors do not use) and instilled a high order to conformity (and a belief in the importance of that conformity) among the cadre of bureaucrats who help run the country for the party and the party's leaders. Their explanation is ingenious, but still unsatisfying. Clearly systematic acculturation from above has led over the decades since Mao and Deng's time to a country that progresses despite embedded levels of corruption. The authors say almost nothing about Xi Jinping's efforts to erase corruption among cadres, imprisoning hundreds of senior party and military figures along the way. Has this purge helped to maintain China's economic growth and the lessening of poverty? Or was it Deng's opening of the economic engine that is responsible for China's exceptionality? Future researchers will have to tell us what Xi's reforms have wrought. The last chapter of this book, on governance, hews largely to the capacity-model notion of governance that is widely accepted, but contested by a few authors-often in this journal. The authors choose to say nothing about conceptions of governance that are performance based, easily measurable and quantifiable, and-linking up with the title and thrust of their book's message-provide a convenient methodological way to account for the drag of corruption on governance within any country or political jurisdiction. This approach could help to provide answers to the nature and extent of the Chinese exception. The effect of leadership on corruption, and the extent to which responsible political leadership deters or even substantially reduces corruption-as in China, Rwanda, Singapore, Mauritius, Botswana, and potentially elsewhere-is never mentioned or evaluated. Nor are such other anticorruption measures as punishment, institutional fixes, removing discretion and shifting citizenbureaucratic interactions to the Internet, enforced declarations of assets (an...