to local governments.<sup>51</sup> The executive authority will often—albeit not always—be substantially stronger in a presidential system than in a parliamentarian system—where the ministers are accountable to the parliament even if they are appointed by a prime minister. The fact that many countries changed from parliamentary to presidential system in the 1990s, particularly in Africa, and the fact that parliaments are often overruled by strong presidents, as increasingly observed in Latin America, have spurred debate about the mechanisms behind this change and its potential implications for governance. In line with this debate, Ross (2001) points at how state revenues from the export of natural resources have increased politicians’ propensity to alter core institutions of governance.<sup>52</sup> Sector governance institutions have been created with sector performance in mind, only to be constrained by private agendas in politics. Better control functions—for example, to secure the quality of audit systems (of SOEs, for instance), or the usage of special funds and investment plans—may be subject to political will, even if initially approved by the same political regime. When “independent” institutions have been created, the executive has sometimes surpassed the power of such institutions by enacting new legislation or ruling out decisions already implemented. For instance, many contract renegotiations between private infrastructure providers and the executive power have undermined the role of the independent sector regulator.<sup>53</sup> Despite its technical competence, the regulators’ role has often been reduced from regulatory authority to oversight responsibility.<sup>54</sup> In sum, from the viewpoint of efforts to improve political accountability in infrastructure, it is essential to recognize that the specific design of constitutional checks and balances may open opportunities for private political agendas – and this can have an impact on sector performance. Political models that reduce constitutional checks and balances are clearly more likely to allow for political influence on the regulatory functions. This means that policies to improve infrastructure performance with sector-specific solutions will have shortcomings when political powers are not sufficiently separated. Moreover, any effort to improve the separation of powers within the sector needs to be implemented for the long run. Highly reversible separations lack the necessary credibility to ensure significant improvements in performance.<sup>55</sup> In theory, this should help explain why what seems to be a best practice sector policy in one country will fail in another.

# **4.2. Reform and self‐discipline to improve**

The implementation of mechanisms to hold politicians accountable can be a long, drawn-out process in the countries where the need is the most urgent. Similarly, the many initiatives from the development community to promote political accountability have sometimes been met with resistance when politicians are encouraged to accept more controls on their performance. It is not easy to document this resistance since communication strategies can be extensively used by public and private organizations to manipulate public opinion.

> 51 Greater authority in the executive may have increased the attractiveness of minister posts. The party whip has become stronger when party loyalty is rewarded with a now more unchecked minister post, thereby weakening individual voice and opinion at the political level. See Ayee et al. (2010)  for discussion of this mechanism.

> 52 See _Foreign Policy_ July/August 2010 for an updated list of _de facto_ and pronounced dictatorships and the link between dictatorship and rank on their “Failed States Index.”

> 53 An example is the regulatory institution’s loss of control of the electricity tariff-setting process in Argentina in 2001. This regulation was kept outside the control of the regulator to adjust for short-term social concerns rather than efficiency. Similarly, the use of energy tariff-setting processes by the Aznar administration in the 1990s to control inflation kept the regulator at a distance from of one of its main responsibilities.

> 54 Guasch (2004) shows a strong correlation between contract renegotiation and lack of a regulatory body in Latin America. However, a large share of the contract renegotiations occurred in countries where an independent regulator was in place. For instance, in Argentina, new contracts have been directly negotiated between the executive and private companies— even if this was the legal role of the regulator.

> 55 There has been great pressure for more transparency and publicity of political actions over the last decade, expressed in Internet web sites that publish laws and decrees, facts about government procurement and comparison of prices, more comprehensive government statistics, and hence, more information about governance performance.

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