Government Type and Public Spending in Africa

• In Event: African Legislatures and Horizontal Accountability

Abstract

How does partisan government composition affect the level of government spending in Africa's democracies? A long tradition of scholarship examines the political, institutional, and ideological determinants of government spending, arguing that the composition of the government plays a role in determining government spending levels. This literature, which shows that coalition governments---governments comprised of more than one party---have larger spending levels than single-party governments, focuses mainly on OECD countries and has largely overlooked the link between government spending and government composition in African democracies. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that African legislatures are weak and ineffectual in the face of strong African leaders, recent work shows that the legislature's composition is a major determinant of whether a partisan government coalition will form. I build on this recent work on legislatures in African democracies and use the government spending literature's account of the common pool resource problems of coalition governments to argue that partisan coalitions will have higher levels of government spending than single party governments. I assess empirical evidence for this claim using original data on government composition in 16 African countries from 1990-2015 and data on government spending from the World Bank.

Author

• Margaret H. Ariotti, University of Georgia