When and Why Political Competition is Bad for Public Goods Provision

• In Event: Distortions to Democracy: Corruption, Clientelism, and Voter Intimidation

Abstract

An expectation from the theoretical literature is that increases in political competition – which increase the threat of future electoral loss – should make incumbents more accountable to their electorate. While much of the empirical literature, even from newer democracies, supports this prediction by uncovering a positive relationship between political competitiveness and public goods provision, we present rigorous evidence of the opposite relationship in Mali using panel data on local electoral outcomes and local public goods provision. Here, increases in political competiveness at the local level contribute to subsequent relative decreases in public goods provision. Informed by in‐depth interviews with local politicians, we argue that this is the result of the fact that local public goods provision requires coordination and greater political competiveness contributes to coordination failures. We provide evidence of this mechanism by both showing that the negative relationship is more likely to obtain for local goods that are more excludable and thus require greater coordination and in places where the local council does not have a majority party and thus multi-party coalitions are required to make local policy. Our data and theory suggest that we should expect such a perverse effect of political competition in other contexts like Mali where local policymaking requires the engagement of a broad coalition of potentially diverse actors.

Author

• Jessica Gottlieb, Texas A&M University