IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/imfstp/v48y2002i3p7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Annett

    (International Monetary Fund)

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the degree of division or fractionalization of a country's population (along ethnolinguistic and religious dimensions) and both political instability and government consumption, using a neoclassical growth model. The principal idea is that greater fractionalization, proxying for the degree of conflict in society, leads to political instability, which in turn leads to higher government consumption aimed at placating the opposition. There is also a feedback mechanism whereby the higher consumption leads to less instability as government consumption reduces the risk of losing office. Empirical evidence based on panel estimation supports this hypothesis. Copyright 2002, International Monetary Fund

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Annett, 2001. "Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 48(3), pages 1-7.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:imfstp:v:48:y:2002:i:3:p:7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2001/03/pdf/annett.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • O23 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development

    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:pal:imfstp:v:48:y:2002:i:3:p:7. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.palgrave-journals.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.