文化与宪法合规性
Culture and constitutional compliance
中文总结 AI 辅助
本文以115国横截面数据为样本，探究国家文化对宪法合规性的影响，发现个人主义文化可提升宪法自我承诺可信度，还验证了正式制度效果依赖非正式制度环境的观点。
中文摘要 AI 辅助
宪法作为一国法律与政治体系的正式基础，具有重要的经济与政治影响。然而，我们仍不清楚为何宪法在一些社会能对政客形成有效约束，在另一些社会却基本被忽视。本文探究国家文化是否对宪法合规性存在影响，研究了115个国家的横截面数据，采用了新的宪法合规性指标。研究发现，个人主义程度更高的社会合规性水平也更高，这些结果具有稳健性，且通过工具变量估计也得到了验证。研究结果揭示了一条从文化特质到长期经济发展的新传导渠道：个人主义的国家文化提升了宪法自我承诺的可信度。本文的分析还支持了更普遍的观点，即正式制度的效果取决于其嵌入的非正式制度环境。在宗教方面，本文的结果与过往研究一致，过往研究将现代穆斯林世界发展不足归因于制度质量缺陷。
英文摘要
Constitutions as the formal foundation of a country's legal and political system have important economic and political effects. Yet, we still know little about why constitutions set effective constraints on politicians in some societies, while being largely disregarded in others. Here, we ask if national culture matters for constitutional compliance. We study a cross-section of 115 countries, making use of novel indicators of constitutional compliance. We find that societies with a more individualistic population exhibit higher levels of compliance. These results are robust and extend to instrumental variables estimations. They imply a novel transmission channel from cultural traits to long-term economic development: individualistic national culture increases the credibility of constitutional self-commitments. Our analysis also supports the more general idea that the effects of formal institutions depend on the informal institutional environment in which they are embedded. Regarding religion, our results are consistent with past research that attributes the lack of development in the modern Muslim world to deficient institutional quality.
