Particularism and Public Goods: The Effect of Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote on Education Spending and Performance

This paper explores how features of the electoral and party system affects the composition and efficiency of government spending--specifically government spending on education. In doing so we contribute to the literature the connection between institutions spending on two fronts. First, we move beyond the simple institutional dichotomies that characterize many existing studies (e.g. presidential v. parliamentary or majoritarian versus PR) and focus instead on the incentives to cultivate a personal vote generated by the electoral and party system. Second, we not only consider how institutions shape the level and composition of government spending, we also demonstrate how those spending decisions affect public goods outcomes. We argue that where the party system emphasizes political particularism resources are allocated less efficiently and the effect of increased spending on literacy is diminished. We test our hypotheses using data on education spending and performance in over 60 developing democracies since 1978. We find that though personal vote systems spend just as much on education as party vote systems, incentives to cultivate a personal vote are associated with higher levels of illiteracy. This is because the particularism in personal vote systems dampens the marginal effect of increased education spending on illiteracy and at its highest levels particularism completely undermines the positive effects of increased education spending on literacy. Finally, we find that the modifying effect of particularism on education spending is strongest when electoral competition is most meaningful—namely, at higher levels of democracy.