A Typology of Public Goods Provision Regarding Collaboration

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I & II
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics II

Abstract

Public goods investment is an important decision for leaders. On the one hand, public goods are conducive to economic growth and increase future tax revenues. On the other hand, public goods might reduce the cost of collaboration for dissenters, and increase the frequency and the magnitude of protests. These features of public goods put autocrats in a dilemma: how can they harvest future economic gain without hurting their survival rate? There is considerable research that focuses on why democracies vary in their provision of public goods, such as distributive politics (Keefer & Khemani, 2005; Stokes, Dunning, Nazareno, & Brusco, 2013), clientelism (Baldwin, 2013), electoral accountability (Sen, 2014), and ethnic conflicts (Alesina, Baqir, & Easterly, 1999; Ejdemyr, Kramon, & Robinson, 2018). However, fewer studies have examined this variation in authoritarian regimes. Even when it is discussed, public goods are defined in relatively general terms (Bell, 2011; Bueno De Mesquita, Smith, Morrow, & Siverson, 2005). Very few studies have investigated how features of public goods factor in leaders’ decisions, especially for authoritarian regimes.

This research examines the feature of collaboration, and I divide public goods into three categories: collaborative, non-collaborative, and anti-collaborative public goods. I define collaborative public goods as those that can decrease communication costs and increase the frequency of interpersonal interaction, such as telecommunication and transportation. Non-collaborative public goods either do not immediately reduce the physical distance between people, or do not speed up information exchange, such as public health and environmental protection. Anti-collaborative public goods increase communication costs and hinder interpersonal interactions, such as public security. I argue that autocrats tend to provide fewer collaborative public goods than democratic leaders when ruling in times of prosperity. Autocrats benefit from restricting media and speech to secure their ruling, however, this advantage is likely to be eroded by the increase of collaborative public goods. This difference on providing collaborative public goods is more significant between democratic countries and authoritarian countries when the leaders seek economic growth. Dissenters and protest organizers are better able to reach people, disseminate information and mobilize participants and supporters when more people gain free access to collaborative public goods. Since non-collaborative public goods do not immediately facilitate social mobilization, I argue that there is no significant difference between political regimes in providing non-collaborative public goods. Additionally, I argue that autocrats are more likely to allocate more resources in anti-collaborative public goods than democratic leaders because fast economic growth generates different governing problems for autocrats.

To investigate the theoretical propositions detailed above, I conducted large-N analyses and included a global sample from 1970 to 2020. I found supporting evidence that more democratic regimes tend to have a higher performance on providing collaborative public goods (as policy outcome indicators: the mobile cellular subscriptions the number of fixed telephone subscriptions), and this difference between authoritarian and democratic regimes is much more evident during economic prosperity. There is a mixed finding in non-collaborative public goods depending on the indicators: authoritarian regimes perform much better than more democratic regimes in public health indicators, especially during economic upturns. There is no significant difference between political regimes on non-collaborative public goods provision during economic downturn. As expected, democratic leaders underinvest in anti-collaborative public goods, and this effect of political regime is more evident during economic upturn. These findings serve as complementary evidence to the political survival literature that a leader’s decision in providing public goods is not only determined by the size of the winning coalition but also hinges upon the collaborative feature of these public goods. The purpose of proposing an additional classification of public goods is that it improves our understanding regarding the variation of social spending and public goods investments across political regimes, especially for authoritarian regimes.

Author

• Jou Fei Huang, Academia Sinica