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Parties or Portfolio? The Economic Consequences of Africa’s Big Cabinets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2015

A. Carl LeVan  and
Assen Assenov
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Abstract

Does cabinet size have an impact on economic policy in Africa? The average number of ministers has increased steadily for four decades, yet we know little about the economic effects of new portfolios, despite popular complaints about costly cabinets. Comparative studies generate conflicting expectations, either blaming coalition governments for patronage or crediting them with economic restraint. Using data on 45 Sub-Saharan African countries between 1971 and 2006, our empirical analysis links parties and portfolios to budgetary policy performance. We show that cabinets with more ministries are associated with budget surpluses, but they are also slightly more likely to engage in patronage spending. Next, we find that cabinets governing through multiparty coalitions have no consistent impact on budget surpluses. However, they are strongly associated with less extractive government and lower rates of patronage spending compared with single-party cabinets. These results hold after controlling for the type of colonial legacy, economic conditions, population size, constraints on executives, level of democracy, oil income, type of party system and ethnic and religious fractionalization. We conclude that parties and portfolios are both important but they have different effects: adding portfolios to the cabinet may improve economic outcomes by enhancing specialization, but governance through multiparty cabinets generates incentives to both limit extraction and restrain patronage spending.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 661 - 690
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

A. Carl LeVan is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. Contact email: levan@american.edu; Twitter: @Dev4Security.

Assen Assenov is Associate Director for Research Support at American University, Washington, DC. Contact email: assenov@american.edu.

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