Small is beautiful, at least in high-income democracies: the distribution of policy-making responsibility, electoral accountability, and incentives for rent extraction

摘要: Why is there significant variation in rent extraction among high-income democracies? A large number of political economy investigations into this research question have found that a long period democratic rule and high per capita income are associated with less public policy-makers. However, attempts to explain the residual, yet significant, countries possess both these characteristics been significantly more circumspect disputed. This paper explores how distribution policy-making responsibilities between electorally accountable decision-makers their unaccountable counterparts determines optimal level rents extracted any given democracy context. Specifically, formally models how: (1) ratio decision-makers, by altering (2) voters' evaluation incumbent competency, changes (3) incentives policy-makers, wishing remain office, minimize short-term order signal competency hopefully retain office. Given "career concerns," theoretical model predicts an increase or decrease will be extraction. hypothesis then tested empirically. Establishing does robustly predict finding, as it can enable analysts contexts may affect for good governance sub-set countries.