Democracy, visibility and public good provision

We examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across a multiplicity of public goods. We show that a “visibility effect” distorts governmental resource allocation such that it helps explain why governments neglect provision of essential public goods, despite their co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of development economics 2007-07, Vol.83 (2), p.506-529
Main Authors: Mani, Anandi, Mukand, Sharun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Democracy
Expectation
Famine
Famines
Government
Government responsiveness
Public good
Public goods
Resource allocation
Studies
Visibility
Voter expectations
Voters
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Summary:We examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across a multiplicity of public goods. We show that a “visibility effect” distorts governmental resource allocation such that it helps explain why governments neglect provision of essential public goods, despite their considerable benefits. We show that greater democratization widens the gap in resource allocation between more visible (such as famine prevention) versus less visible (such as malnutrition prevention) public goods, up to an intermediate level of democracy. Beyond this level, this gap decreases. Furthermore, public goods with low visibility are prone to multiple equilibria in resource allocation, with voter expectations being shown to be important.
ISSN:0304-3878
1872-6089
DOI:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2005.06.008