This study uses quantitative testing to assess temporal variation in the provision of 15 public goods. It finds that regime consolidation changes leaders’ incentives for public goods provision. New political leaders face not only institutional but initial extra-institutional challenges – such as coups and revolutions – that affect spending priorities. Thus, states with inclusive institutions spend more on public goods as they consolidate and become less vulnerable to elite demands. Exclusive regimes spend more on public goods early on when they are vulnerable to the excluded majority, but become increasingly repressive as they become insulated from popular demands.
To stay in office, leaders must maintain a sufficient level of support from those who have the power to replace them through institutional processes. In addition, however, leaders are often replaced by factors outside of the domestic process. Leaders presiding over weak institutions must therefore use government resources to address both institutional and extra-institutional actors.
Tests on public goods spanning political rights, government expenditure, education and health provide qualified support to the theory linking inclusive government and the provision of public goods.
- Regimes with large winning coalitions generally increase public goods provision as they consolidate. This holds true for improvement to political freedoms, public goods expenditures and education. However, this does not hold for public health provision.
- Exclusive regimes generally reduce public goods provision as they consolidate. Regime consolidation allows leaders of exclusive regimes to become increasingly repressive. Civil liberties are diminished and political freedoms deteriorate.
- For most public goods, the positive effect of coalition size on public goods provision increases as regimes consolidate. The longer regimes have been in power, the greater the public goods provision in inclusive regimes relative to exclusive regimes.
- However, the least consolidated exclusive regimes actually provide more public goods than the least consolidated inclusive regimes. With the exception of political rights, this finding is robust across all measures of political freedom, government expenditure, and education.
Thus, inclusive government has a greater effect on public goods provision than previously thought, but the full magnitude of this effect is not seen until regimes consolidate. When regimes are least consolidated, inclusive government has a negative effect on public goods provision. These findings suggest that observers should not have too much hope in dictators who provide for the people in the first years in power, nor express too much concern over democracies that do not immediately provide for their citizens. Leaders will act in accordance with the logic of their political survival, meaning that benevolence in new autocracies and corruption in new democracies may not be indicative of long-term behaviour.
