When Mayors Deliver: Political Alignment and Well-being

While in recent decades developing countries have achieved significant improvements in well-being, disparities within countries persist. Focusing on municipalities in which health services are decentralized and patronage is prevalent, we argue that a little-studied factor, the alignment between mayo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in comparative international development 2022-09, Vol.57 (3), p.303-336
Main Authors: Garay, Candelaria, Simison, Emilia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alignment
Cities
Clientelism
Competition
Decentralization
Developing countries
Elections
Governors
Health aspects
Health disparities
Health risks
Health services
Incentives
Infant mortality
Infants
LDCs
Mayors
Mortality rates
Municipalities
Patient outcomes
Patronage
Political factors
Robust control
Slums
Social Sciences
Social service
Social services
Social services delivery
Socioeconomic factors
Voters
Welfare
Well being
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Summary:While in recent decades developing countries have achieved significant improvements in well-being, disparities within countries persist. Focusing on municipalities in which health services are decentralized and patronage is prevalent, we argue that a little-studied factor, the alignment between mayors and governors, plays an important role in explaining differences in infant mortality rates. In the context of widespread clientelism, lack of alignment deprives mayors of substantial discretionary resources. This generates incentives for nonaligned mayors to focus on improving decentralized social services under their control to cultivate voter support, producing better welfare outcomes associated with these services. Employing an original dataset of metropolitan municipalities in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1991 and 2018, we find that mayoral alignment is associated with higher infant mortality, a critical metric of well-being, and with lower levels of health service provision. Local health services in turn reduce infant mortality rates in our data. These results are robust when we control for relevant socioeconomic and political factors, such as electoral competition, protest, and the presence of the state in slums, where health risks are higher.
ISSN:0039-3606
1936-6167
DOI:10.1007/s12116-022-09357-w