State capacity, political competition and public goods provision: A cross-national comparative study
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20578911231161248 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
State capacity, political
competition and public goods
provision: A cross-national
comparative study
Jiali Shen
Kobe University, Japan
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 dis-
cuss 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.
Keywords
competition, national politics, public goods, state capacity
Introduction
Research on institutional performance as the result of the performance of a country’s political
system is rich not only theoretically but also empirically (Deacon, 2009; Lijphart, 1999;
Wilfahrt, 2018). The aspects of institutional performance are also numerous, such as economic
growth and corruption. Among this, public goods provision is one of the most important aspects
to measure the performance of a country’s system (Putnam, 1993). When explaining differences
in public goods provision, it is generally believed that there are several factors that play an important
Corresponding author:
Jiali Shen, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Kobe University, 2-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe-shi, Japan.
Email: sjl.kobe.111@gmail.com
Original Research Article
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2023, Vol. 8(2) 620–636
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20578911231161248
journals.sagepub.com/home/acp
role in public goods provision. For example, social cleavage based on ethnic, religious or linguistic
groups negatively affects public goods provision (Alesina and Weder, 2002; Miguel and Gugerty,
2005; Mwangi, 2006; Baldwin and Huber, 2010; Alesina and Zhuravskaya, 2011; Trounstine, 2016;
Kustov and Pardelli, 2018; Tajima and Ostwald, 2018). In discussions of historical heritage, the
legacy of pre-modern or colonial institutions can have a positive impact on the provision of public
goods (Dell et al., 2018; Wilfahrt, 2018; Lily, 2007; Banerjee et al., 2005). Social capital (Putnam,
1993; Knack, 2002) and fiscal decentralization under political centralization (Li and Zhou, 2005;
Lambright, 2010; Mitchell and Weiwen, 2022; Camões, 2022) will also have a positive impact on
regional competition in public goods provision.
However, when discussing the relationship between political competition and public goods pro-
vision, three relationship models often appear. Some scholars claim that the relationship between
political competition and public goods provision is positive (Auerbach, 2016; Costa-I-Font et al.,
2003; Crost and Kambhampati, 2010; Habyarimana et al., 2007; Hecock, 2006; Kosec et al.,
2018; Rosenzweig, 2015; Arvate, 2013; Zhang et al., 2004; Chhibber and Nooruddin, 2004).
For example, Auerbach (2016) showed that the density of party networks is important for public
goods provision in a community in India, while others believe that the level of electoral competition
at the macrolevel is closely related to the public goods provision of a country (Costa-I-Font et al.,
2003; Hecock, 2006; Kosec et al., 2018; Rosenzweig, 2015; Boyne et al., 2012). In other words, the
higher the level of political competition in a country, the better the public goods provision. But
some assert that the relationship between the two is negative, that is, that higher levels of compe-
tition may not necessarily bring public goods (Ashworth et al., 2014).
Simultaneously, some scholars demonstrate that the relationship between the two is uncertain
and needs to be adjusted according to the situation or mediated by other factors. For example,
Boulding and Brown (2014) argue that fiscal constraints may have an impact on the relationship
between the level of political competition and public goods provision. It is also believed that the
relationship between the two is closely related to the type of public goods, and the relationship
reverses as the type of public goods changes (Besley et al., 2004; Stasavage, 2005).
Furthermore, even when the level of political competition is high, the efficiency of legislative bar-
gaining can affect the relationships between political competition and public goods provision
(Gottlieb et al., 2019). So, are there any other factors that have an impact on the relationship
between political competition and public goods and then on public goods provision? In this
article, I will discuss whether state capacity (Besley et al., 2004; Vaccaro, 2022) also affects the
relationship between the level of political competition and public goods provision. Political com-
petition usually represents politicians’policy commitment to provide voters with public goods
through competitive elections, but whether this commitment can be effectively implemented
depends on state capacity, that is, the executive capacity of the bureaucracy. In other words, I
find state capacity will affect the relationship between political competition and public goods pro-
vision. Therefore, this research will explore the impacts of political competition and state capacity
on public goods provision.
This article makes several contributions to the research of political competition and public goods
provision. Theoretically, I demonstrate that political competition can actually have a positive
impact on public goods provision and offer a new mechanism based on state capacity remaining
at a certain level for understanding this phenomenon. Empirically, I use cross-national data
which is different from most of the above studies on the impact of political competition on the
public goods provision based on a single country or a few countries as the unit of analysis, or
within democratic or non-democratic countries. Finally, this study also uses four cases –Japan,
Shen 621
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