ISAS Working Papers

Delivery of social services of health and education often see significant cross-national variations within a country. State governments in democratic developing counties sometimes have an incentive to provide targeted benefits as political rents at the expense of the provision of broad social services. Differences in state government expenditures can be traced back to certain imperfections in the political market, which may be greater in some states as compared to others. These imperfections, in turn, affect the political incentives for the provision of social services. The three independent factors or imperfections in the political market that have been identified to have the potential for affecting electoral accountability are the degree of information available to voters, the dynamics of political competition, and the extent of ethnic fragmentation in a state.