Party Democratization and Fiscal Redistribution

23 Pages Posted: 11 Sep 2013 Last revised: 4 Sep 2015

See all articles by Kenneth Mori McElwain

Kenneth Mori McElwain

University of Tokyo - Institute of Social Science

Erin McGovern

Independent

Date Written: March 8, 2014

Abstract

We demonstrate that variation in the selectorate of party leaders influences whether governments are motivated to spend more on particularistic vs. programmatic goods. When leaders are elected by a broad segment of the party, such as in a one-man-one-vote primary, they will privilege expenditures on public goods that expand the party's appeal nationally. However, if leaders are responsible to their backbenchers, e.g. selected in a parliamentary vote, then they will accede to their legislators’ demands for more geographically targeted redistribution. We test these hypotheses using an original dataset of party organization, covering over 120 political parties in seventeen advanced-industrialized democracies between 1950 and 2005. We find that where the leaders of governing parties are selected by other backbenchers, the budget share of capital expenditures increases, while that of social security transfers decreases. These results hold even when controlling for a wide variety of economic and institutional variables, such as electoral system and government composition.

Keywords: political parties, party organization, redistributive politics

Suggested Citation

McElwain, Kenneth Mori and McGovern, Erin, Party Democratization and Fiscal Redistribution (March 8, 2014). Updated March 8 2014. Earlier version presented at the American Political Science Association 2013 Annual Meeting, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2299983 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2299983

Kenneth Mori McElwain (Contact Author)

University of Tokyo - Institute of Social Science ( email )

Hongo 7-3-1
Tokyo, TOKYO 113-0033
Japan

Erin McGovern

Independent

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
49
Abstract Views
735
PlumX Metrics