Cabinet Size and Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa
There is frequent public and media concern over the cost of bloated cabinets in many Sub-Saharan African countries. Scholarship on elite clientelism links cabinet positions with corruption and practices that undermine sound policy making. This pape...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/378931588794736471/Cabinet-Size-and-Governance-in-Sub-Saharan-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33714 |
| Summary: | There is frequent public and media
concern over the cost of bloated cabinets in many
Sub-Saharan African countries. Scholarship on elite
clientelism links cabinet positions with corruption and
practices that undermine sound policy making. This paper
presents new data on the number of ministers in African
governments and shows a negative association with several
measures of governance. The associations are robust in a
regression framework that exploits within-country variation
over time and accounts for various potential confounders.
These patterns suggest that policy makers, donors,
investors, and citizens should pay close attention to the
number of ministers appointed to the cabinet. Although the
paper cautions against simplistic policy prescriptions, a
sizable increase in the number of ministers is likely bad
news for governance. |
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