Governance, law, religion and culture

Abstract

We proposed a model in which culture plays a dominant role, along with religion and legal origin, in determining the quality of governance in a country. We examined four dimensions of culture and four measurements of governance quality across 71 countries. Our empirical results demonstrated the dominant role played by culture, over and above religion and legal origin, in explaining governance quality. As culture is persistent and unlikely to be easily changed, efforts to improve governance quality might be doomed to failure in nations with cultural values that are hostile to good governance.

Citation

Haggard, D.L. and Haggard, S. (2010), "Governance, law, religion and culture", International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 569-596. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-13-04-2010-B006