Title: Innovation with information technology: coalition governments and emerging economies - fighting corruption with electronic governance

Authors: Siva Prasad Ravi

Addresses: School of Business and Economics, Thompson Rivers University, 900 McGill Road, Kamloops, BC, V2C 5N3, Canada

Abstract: Coalition governments are becoming increasingly common in many countries with multi-party political systems. The coalition government experiences from countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa show that invariably some areas of public policy formulation and implementation gets adversely affected in varying degrees, as a result of coalition politics. Corruption is one such area. Research in this area found ample evidence that corruption levels in many developing and some developed countries increased with installation of coalition governments and consequently resulted in poor governance. Coalition governments have been found to shy away from serious efforts to fight or eliminate corruption, as this can threaten the stability or the very existence of these governments. Electronic governance (e-governance), in essence is provision of simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent (SMART) governance using information and communications technologies (ICTs). This study verifies our hypothesis that e-governance can eliminate or drastically reduce corruption, and can be an invaluable tool for developing and implementing effective public policy and good governance, even in countries with coalition governments.

Keywords: coalition governments; coalitions; corruption; good governance; information technology; communications technology; ICT policies; emerging economies; internet; world wide web; innovation; multi-party political systems; coalition politics; political parties; Asia; Europe; Africa; policy formulation; public policies; policy implementation; developing countries; developed countries; poor governance; simple governance; moral governance; accountable governance; responsive governance; transparent governance; accountability; voting; electronic voting; elections; Estonia; transparency; democracy; democratic process; electoral malpractices; Seoul; municipalities; local government; South Korea; administrative corruption; online procedures enhancement; civil applications; OPEN system; Bhoomi; Karnataka; India; G2C; government-to-citizen; land records; bureaucratic corruption; business; emerging markets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEM.2013.050741

International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets, 2013 Vol.5 No.1, pp.46 - 66

Received: 05 Mar 2012
Accepted: 27 Apr 2012

Published online: 13 Nov 2013 *

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