Electoral Competition and the Growth of Public Spending in 13 Industrial Democracies, 1950 to 1983

Abstract

This article examines a theoretically important issue that has received surprisingly little attention: whether the process of democratic competition for public office has fueled the growth of domestic spending in the capitalist democracies since World War II. Probably because it is difficult to measure electoral competition in multiparty systems, existing comparative studies of public spending either ignore this question or use dubious measures of electoral competition. This study presents and tests some conceptually more appealing measures of competition. The results show a strong, robust relationship between improved indicators of electoral competition and the growth of domestic spending from 1950 to 1973 and 1973 to 1983. The study concludes by analyzing the implications of the findings for economic performance in the capitalist democracies and for the democratic management of fiscal policy.