IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v62y1989i2p173-179.html

Political successions and the growth of government

Author

Listed:
  • Mwangi Kimenyi
  • William Shughart

Abstract

During the first seven years (1979–1985) of Kenya's second head of state, the process of establishing a stable supporting coalition was accompanied by rapid increases in government spending. As evidenced by continued increase in the size of the cabinet as announced in early 1988, the process of forming a stable coalition may not be complete. The evidence provided in this paper shows that the process of coalition formation following leadership transition in limited autocracies leads to increases in the size of government. This provides strong support for Tullock's suggestion regarding the importance of stability in autocratic and limited autocratic governments. Although we would expect our results to hold for other countries, generalization of the growth-of-government hypothesis should be done with caution for several reasons. First, we do not think that this phenomenon would take place in political successions resulting from a military coup. In that type of succession, the new leader is likely to eliminate the supporters of the disposed leader and replace them with members of his coalition. Secondly, many political successions are accompanied by changes in ideology which may involve movement to more free markets and therefore smaller governments, or movement towards more planned economies which would lead to larger governments. Such changes in the size of government resulting from the ideological preferences of leaders may be difficult to isolate from those that are due to strategic coalition formation. Finally, the interest-group behavior of tribal coalitions in Kenya may have important effects on the size of the government that may not exist in other countries. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Suggested Citation

  • Mwangi Kimenyi & William Shughart, 1989. "Political successions and the growth of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 173-179, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:62:y:1989:i:2:p:173-179
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00124333
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00124333
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00124333?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peltzman, Sam, 1980. "The Growth of Government," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(2), pages 209-287, October.
    2. Albert Breton, 1974. "The economic theory of representative government: A reply," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 129-133, December.
    3. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    4. Gordon Tullock, 1959. "Problems of Majority Voting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 67(6), pages 571-571.
    5. Peltzman, Sam, 1980. "The Growth of Government," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(2), pages 209-287, October.
    6. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mwangi S. Kimenyi, 2006. "Ethnicity, Governance and the Provision of Public Goods," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 15(1), pages 62-99, April.
    2. Jørgen Andersen, 2012. "Costs of taxation and the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 83-115, October.
    3. Mwangi Kimenyi & William Shughart, 2010. "The political economy of constitutional choice: a study of the 2005 Kenyan constitutional referendum," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-27, March.
    4. Daniel D. Bonneau & Joshua C. Hall & Yang Zhou, 2022. "Institutional implant and economic stagnation: a counterfactual study of Somalia," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(3), pages 483-503, March.
    5. Benjamin Broman, 2022. "Social elites, popular discontent, and the limits of cooptation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(3), pages 281-299, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell M. Rhine, 2006. "On the size and growth of government," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Jan), pages 13-30.
    2. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    3. Dennis Mueller & Peter Murrell, 1986. "Interest groups and the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 125-145, January.
    4. Chang, Alex Chuan-hsien, 2018. "How do Asian values constrain public support for redistribution?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 139-150.
    5. Thomas A. Garrett & Andrew F. Kozak & Russell M. Rhine, 2010. "Institutions and government growth: a comparison of the 1890s and the 1930s," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(Mar), pages 109-120.
    6. Casey B. Mulligan & Ricard Gil & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2004. "Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies than Nondemocracies?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 51-74, Winter.
    7. Tridimas, George & Winer, Stanley L., 2005. "The political economy of government size," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 643-666, September.
    8. Allan Meltzer & Scott Richard, 1983. "Tests of a rational theory of the size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 403-418, January.
    9. Randall G. Holcombe, 1993. "Are There Ratchets in the Growth of Federal Government Spending?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 21(1), pages 33-47, January.
    10. Randall Holcombe, 2005. "Government growth in the twenty-first century," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 95-114, July.
    11. Birdsall, Nancy & James, Estelle, 1992. "Health, government, and the poor : the case for the private sector," Policy Research Working Paper Series 938, The World Bank.
    12. Daniel E. Ingberman & Robert P. Inman, 1987. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy," NBER Working Papers 2405, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    14. Lejour, A.M., 1995. "Cooperative and competitive policies in the EU : The European Siamese twin?," Other publications TiSEM 173fdc37-cf0b-46b8-b132-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2001. "The Impact of Budgets on the Poor: Tax and Benefit," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0110, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    16. Giorgio Brosio & Carla Marchese, 1988. "The Growth of Government under Different Redistributive Rules: A Long Term Study of the Italian Case," Public Finance Review, , vol. 16(4), pages 439-463, October.
    17. Philip Grossman, 1987. "The optimal size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 131-147, January.
    18. Mulligan, Casey B. & Gil Sala-I-Martin X., Ricard, 2002. "Social Security and Democracy," Working Papers 180, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    19. James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1981. "The size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 261-274, January.
    20. Matsusaka, John G, 2000. "Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative in the First Half of the Twentieth Century," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 619-650, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:62:y:1989:i:2:p:173-179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.