Essential Components of the Success of Parker’s Reforms

Because our core model is one of corruption reform as an equilibrium selection problem, it is important to analyze in detail the conditions that we believe helped William Parker, acting as what we call an “institutional entrepreneur,” to move from a high-corruption to a low-corruption equilibrium. In this chapter, we identify, and then explore in detail, four such conditions: internal contestability, external contestability, values, and media. These conditions are not discussed in abstract terms. Instead, for example, with regards to the first condition, we examine in detail the particulars of governance in California in the 1930s,’ 40s, and’ 50s that promoted internal governmental contestability. We attempt to provide the same level of specificity with regards to all of our four conditions.