The Strong and the Weak: Ups and Downs of State Capacity in Southeast Asia

Larsson, Tomas

doi:10.1111/aspp.12040

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 72 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Public services quality and accessibility is a vital instrument of SDGs, especially in developing and emerging economies. Larsson (2013) analyzed that state governance and policymaking are significant institutional performance and service delivery factors in southern Asian economies. Cohodes (2018) discussed that the state capacity and prudent resource utilization shorten the state development gap and achieve social sustainability.…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypotheses Development 21 Public Servi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nexus of E-government, cybersecurity and corruption on public service (PSS) sustainability in Asian economies using fixed-effect and random forest algorithm

Abbas

Qaisar

et al. 2021

OIR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeE-government development (EGD) is vital in enhancing the institutional quality and sustainable public service (SPS) delivery by eradicating corruption and cybersecurity crimes.Design/methodology/approachThe present study applied econometric fixed-effect (FE) regression analysis and random forest (RF) algorithm through machine learning for comprehensive estimations in achieving SPS. This study gauges the nexus between the EGD as an independent variable and public service sustainability (PSS) as a proxy of public health services as a dependent variable in the presence of two moderators, corruption and cybersecurity indices from 47 Asian countries economies from 2015 to 2019.FindingsThe computational estimation and econometric findings show that EGD quality has improved with time in Asia and substantially promoted PSS. It further explores that exercising corruption control measures and introducing sound cybersecurity initiatives enhance PSS's quality and support the EDG effect much better.Practical implicationsThe study concludes that E-Government has positively impacted PSS (healthcare) in Asia while controlling cybersecurity and institutional malfunctioning made an E-Government system healthier and SPS development in Asia.Originality/valueThis study added a novel contribution to existing E-Government and public services literature by comprehensively applied FE regression and RF algorithm analysis. Moreover, E-Government and cybersecurity improvement also has taken under consideration for PSS in Asian economies.

show abstract

Section: Literature Review and Hypotheses Development 21 Public Servi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nexus of E-government, cybersecurity and corruption on public service (PSS) sustainability in Asian economies using fixed-effect and random forest algorithm

Abbas

Qaisar

et al. 2021

OIR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…12 This point was thoughtfully raised by one of the anonymous reviewers. 13 Tsing 2003, 5101. 14 Examples include Levi 1988, Bräutigam et al 2008and Larsson 2013 Di John 2010. 16 Le Billon 2001. formal structures, which may in turn facilitate the formation of alternative power centers built around these resource rents.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Undermining the State? Informal Mining and Trajectories of State Formation in Eastern Mindanao, Philippines

Verbrugge

2015

Critical Asian Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Building on critical perspectives on the state and the informal economy, this article provides an analysis of the "state of the state" on the eastern Mindanao mineral frontier. In the first instance, the author explains that the massive expansion of informal small-scale gold mining, instead of undermining state rule, has given rise to joint institutions of extraction that promote the interests of local politicians and informal miners, amongst others. Relying on the coercive and legitimizing strengths of local state institutions, local politicians have created an environment conducive to the persistence and arguably the further expansion of small-scale gold mining. In the process, they not only beef up their personal authority and the state's fiscal revenues, but also contribute to the consolidation of state rule on the upland frontier. Transcending the local level, this parallel process of smallscale mining expansion and state consolidation, the author argues, can be understood as the result of a long-standing tradition of decentralized state building through local strongmenpoliticians. Finally, attention is drawn to the expansion of large-scale mining and how it is highly likely to upset the sociopolitical stability built around joint extraction regimes in the informal small-scale mining economy.

show abstract

“…16 These indirect proxies, which are perhaps problematic if the approach were to be used for generalized hypothesis testing, are simply no longer necessary given the presence of the V-Dem data. In this vein, we also note that other literature that makes use of questionable proxies for state capacity include those that use the Doing Business report (Larsson 2013) or the Polity IV executive constraint (Asadullah and Savoia 2018), which is a measure of democratic political institutions. And even in their seminal article, Fearon and Laitin (2003) use the log of GDP per capita as a proxy for military and bureaucratic capacity.…”

Section: Comparison Of Methodology To Other Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

An Index Measuring State Capacity, 1789–2018

O’Reilly

Murphy

2022

Economica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper contributes to the literature on state capacity by developing a method that yields an index of state capacity with far more comprehensive data coverage across time and countries than has been possible previously. Unlike narrower measures of fiscal capacity or legal capacity, the index is more comprehensive, using data from the Varieties of Democracy dataset on fiscal capacity, a state's control over its territory, the rule of law, and the provision of public goods used to support markets. Like the previous literature, it demonstrates that the historical prevalence of warfare predicts state capacity. Several exercises are performed to demonstrate the validity of the index in measuring state capacity. ECONOMICA [JULYWe take a few steps to replicate previous results in the state capacity literature to demonstrate the effectiveness of the index. Most notably, we follow Besley and Persson (2009) in demonstrating empirically the link between the frequency of warfare and state capacity as of 1975. We are able to find the relationship using their original specification, and in Appendix C, we test the relationship exhaustively, thereby showing a correlation and a potential causal link between state warfare and state capacity in a set of specifications that is far more comprehensive than previously considered (while also showing that civil wars negatively predict state capacity). In Appendix D, we consider numerous specifications relating state capacity to economic performance, including a replication of the findings from Dincecco and Prado (2012).The structure of the paper is as follows. Section II reviews much of the existing literature on state capacity. Section III constructs our index. Section IV replicates the findings of Besley and Persson (2009) by linking war to state capacity. Section V concludes. Further empirical applications are found in Appendices C and D. I. LITERATURE REVIEW Efforts to measure state capacity have been made in the recent past, often with the use of Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). Fukuyama (2014) combines the 'Government Effectiveness' and 'Control of Corruption' indicators; Andrews et al. (2017) use these two indicators in conjunction with 'Rule of Law'; and most recently, Pritchett (2021) uses the three used by Andrews et al. (2017) along with 'Regulatory Quality'. Using WGI is frequently sensible, but it has a limited time dimension, preventing its use for more historical questions.Other contemporary data sources with similar limitations include the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) and the Fragile States Index (FSI). Besley and Persson (2011, pp. 310-11) measure legal capacity using the contract enforcement index in the World Bank Doing Business dataset, and fiscal capacity as the share of government revenue raised by income tax. When questions of history are most relevant, however, researchers have tended to rely on historical tax revenue as a means of measuring fiscal capacity (see, for example, Gennaioli and Voth 2015), and therefore proxying state capacity o...

show abstract

The Strong and the Weak: Ups and Downs of State Capacity in Southeast Asia

Cited by 16 publications

References 72 publications

Nexus of E-government, cybersecurity and corruption on public service (PSS) sustainability in Asian economies using fixed-effect and random forest algorithm

Nexus of E-government, cybersecurity and corruption on public service (PSS) sustainability in Asian economies using fixed-effect and random forest algorithm

Undermining the State? Informal Mining and Trajectories of State Formation in Eastern Mindanao, Philippines

An Index Measuring State Capacity, 1789–2018

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About