Political Polarization and the Size of Government

Erik Lindqvist () and Robert Östling ()
Additional contact information
Robert Östling: Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: Department of Economics, P.O. Box 6501,113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

No 749, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We study the effect of political polarization on government spending and redistribution using the dispersion of self-reported political preferences as our measure of polarization. Politically polarized countries have lower levels of redistribution and government consumption. The relationship between political polarization and the size of government is stronger in democratic countries, indicating that the effect goes through the political system. The results are robust to a large set of controlvariables, including GDP per capita and income inequality.

Keywords: Political Polarization; Social Cohesion; Ethnic Fractionalization; Social Capital; Size of Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H20 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-soc
Date: 2008-05-15

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Related works:
Working Paper: Political Polarization and the Size of Government (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0749

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