Fourth Branch Agencies: A Silver Bullet for Making Government Accountable?

A new consensus appears to have emerged among academics and policy practitioners: Governments can be made to respect constitutional rules by establishing and constitutionally entrenching watchdogs, such as anti-corruption commissions, electoral commissions, or ombudspersons. In this article, we evaluate the consequences of what we propose to call the New York Consensus. We find that fourth branch agencies can increase constitutional compliance, but their effects are largely limited to higher income countries with a democratic political system.