Abstract

AbstractThere is frequent public and media concern over the cost of bloated cabinets in many Sub‐Saharan African countries. Scholarship on elite clientelism links cabinet positions with corruption and practices that undermine sound policymaking. This article presents new data on the number of ministers in African governments and documents a robust negative association with several measures of governance, both across countries and in a regression framework that exploits within‐country variation over time and accounts for various potential confounders. This suggests policymakers, donors, investors, and citizens should pay close attention to the number of ministers appointed to the cabinet. Although the article cautions against simplistic policy prescriptions, a sizable increase in the number of ministers is likely bad news for governance.

Highlights

  • The number of ministers appointed to the cabinet is a frequent concern in many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa

  • We present new data on cabinet size in Sub-Saharan African countries, extending prior work by Arriola (2009), and assess their association with a series of governance measures related to corruption and the quality of public policy

  • Clientelist politicians prefer discretion and weak oversight of the implementation of policies, so that they can extract personal benefits and channel resources to their supporters (Cruz & Keefer, 2015). This implies that the potential for cabinet size to be associated with poor governance and corruption is especially likely in settings where programmatic political parties are weak or absent, as is the case in many Sub-Saharan African countries

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Summary

Introduction

The number of ministers appointed to the cabinet is a frequent concern in many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. We present new data on cabinet size in Sub-Saharan African countries, extending prior work by Arriola (2009), and assess their association with a series of governance measures related to corruption and the quality of public policy.

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