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Exaggerating good governance: Regime type and score inflation among executive survey informants
Author(s) -
Shockley Bethany,
Ewers Michael,
Nardis Yioryos,
Gengler Justin
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12330
Subject(s) - autocracy , corporate governance , transparency (behavior) , survey data collection , inflation (cosmology) , good governance , economics , accounting , language change , corollary , perception , business , political science , democracy , psychology , law , politics , management , physics , mathematics , literature , neuroscience , theoretical physics , pure mathematics , art , statistics
Researchers and policymakers often rely on executive surveys to understand and promote good governance. In doing so, they assume that the evaluations provided by these well‐informed respondents are not systematically influenced by regime type. However, regime‐embedded executives often have a personal stake in the survey outcomes, incentivizing them to exaggerate good governance. This paper compares World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey responses to corollary measures of key governance concepts in democracies, anocracies, and autocracies. It finds evidence of significant score inflation among executives in closed regimes. The individual‐level mechanisms are explored in one autocracy by comparing responses from regime‐embedded informants based at firms headquartered within the country with those managing businesses headquartered abroad. These micro‐level data likewise reveal evidence of widespread inflation, particularly on items related to governance. Finally, a closer look at Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index demonstrates the broader impact Executive Opinion Survey inflation for measuring governance within closed regimes.