Living in New York City I’ve never been to where the state government is located: Albany; I can count on one hand my friends who have been to Albany. It is fairly clear that Albany has no clue, or care, about the needs of New York City, cf., denying the city the right to police bus lanes using video cameras, denying the city the ability to raise money and regulate automobile usage in Manhattan’s urban core through the implementation of a congestion charge, and on, and on; to the point that I’ve agitated, in half-jest, for partition creating a separate state for New York City.

So it comes as no surprise that a 2012 research paper from the Harvard Kennedy School and Singapore Management University entitled Isolated Capital Cities, Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from U.S. States (PDF) makes the case that US State capital cities are robustly associated with greater levels of corruption. Their findings:

1. There is a strong empirical connection between isolated capital cities and greater levels of corruption across U.S. states. Holding a very robust connection… with different measures of corruption, and different measures of the degree of isolation of the capital city.
2. There is more money in state-level political campaigns in states with isolated capitals.
3. Newspapers provide greater coverage of state politics when their audiences are more concentrated around the capital. Greater media coverage is most strongly associated with lower levels of corruption, and capital cities that have weaker newspaper coverage tend to have higher levels of corruption.
4. Voter turnout in state elections is greater in places that are closer to the capital.

Isolated capitals are often smaller than the cities which drive the economy:

1. Albany and New York City;
2. Sacrament and San Francisco & Los Angeles;
3. Springfield and Chicago;
4. Tallahassee and Miami

Which means that voter turnout in those states are lower. Furthermore, the authors find the following conclusion:

We have explored the connections between the spatial distribution of population, accountability and corruption, in the context of US states. We first established the stylized fact that isolated capital cities are associated with greater levels of corruption. This holds true for different measures of the isolation of the capital, and of corruption.

We also saw evidence that state politicians tend to get more money from campaign contributions in states with isolated capitals, belying the fear that having the capital in a major economic center would lead to a greater risk of capture of state politics by economic interests – and consistent with the idea that lower levels of accountability in isolated capitals would actually increase that risk.

From a policy perspective, in particular, one is led to conclude that extra vigilance might be needed, when it comes to polities with isolated capital cities, in order to counteract their tendency towards reduced accountability.