Masterskurser och stöd till masterstudenter

The Quality of Government in Comparative Perspective

This course explores problems of the quality of government (QoG) and corruption in a comparative perspective. The background to this is the recent consensus among social scientists about the importance of high-quality government for economic and democratic development as well as for social and environmental sustainability. Government organizations that are trustworthy, reliable, impartial, uncorrupted and competent are currently seen as one of the most important determinants of human well-being. Until recently the "general wisdom" was that corruption and related phenomena (patronage, clientelism and cronyism) had many positive effects ("greasing the wheels"). New theories and better data have turned this argument around. Corruption is now seen as having detrimental effects on economic growth, public goods provision, the democratic processes and trust among citizens. Quality of government is not a problem of developing countries only, but exists also in economically advanced democracies where trust in government institutions and the sustainability of welfare programs have been questioned.

This course explores problems of the quality of government (QoG) and corruption in a comparative perspective.

The central issues that will be addressed in the course are: What is QoG? How can QoG be defined and measured? What do you get from high QoG and what are the mechanisms through which the effects of high/low QoG work? What explains the great variation between countries in QoG? How is QoG related to democracy, economic growth, the rule of law, social capital, inequality, social policies, and people’s collective and individual well-being? Lastly, for those who aspire to win the Nobel prize: What does it take for countries to change from low to high quality government institutions?

The Performance of Democracies

This course explores factors that explain cross country variation in democratic performance and their implications. More specifically, it is concerned with how institutional variation among democratic regimes is related to outcomes in general dimensions of performance, such as, human well-being, corruption and sound management of public finances, among others.

This course explores factors that explain cross country variation in democratic performance and their implications.

It therefore takes a ‘governance’ perspective, focusing less on issues that have to do with what democracy is, democratic transitions or democratic survival, but rather with why and how democracies ‘succeed or fail’ in the aforementioned areas. It also reviews the implications that follow for citizen attitudes and democratic support.

Stöd till masterstudenter

Är du student vid Göteborgs universitet och vill skriva ditt examensarbete om ett QoG-relaterat ämne?

Handledning

Våra forskare kan ge kompetent handledning för din avhandling. Vi har en mycket bred kompetens och forskar om allt från det svenska fisket till HIV-epidemier i Afrika och utvecklingen av effektiva byråkratiska institutioner.

Forskningsområden

Gratis data

Vi har sedan starten 2004 kontinuerligt samlat in data som på olika sätt är kopplat till våra forskningsområden.

QoG data

Visualiseringsverktyg

QoG-institutets visualiseringsverktyg ger dig möjlighet att använda QoG data på ett roligt och lekfullt sätt. Verktyget kan visualisera variablerna i QoG Basic datamängd på en världskarta, visa variablernas distribution och korrelation i en scatterplot samt visa förändringar i dessa interaktioner under tid. Förhoppningsvis kommer detta främja förståelsen för variablerna och ge upphov till intressanta frågor.

Visualiseringsverktyg

Publicering

QoG-institutet publicerar en serie med working papers. Magisteruppsatser som är skrivna inom ramen för QoG kan komma att publiceras i denna serie.

Working papers