State capacity, political competition and public goods provision: A cross-national comparative study

Abstract

In the research on explaining public goods provision, political competition is usually linked with public goods provision and it is believed that political competition will have a positive or negative impact on public goods provision. However, others suggest that this relationship changes with the influence of other variables. This article which uses data analysis of 165 countries in 2013 to discuss the relationship between state capacity, political competition and public goods provision and its impact on public goods provision. The results show that public goods provision is good when there is only strong state capacity or a high level of political competition, or both. Then, the four cases of Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Laos are selected to illustrate the mechanism by which the interaction of state capacity and political competition affects public goods provision.