Who Gets Public Goods?Political Favoritism in Ethnically Diverse Societies

Brian Minbmin@ucla.eduEITMUniversity of California, Los Angeles

July 18, 2007

Who Gets Public Goods?

• Universalism vs. targeted recipients• Core supporters (Cox & McCubbins 1986) vs.

marginal supporters (Lindbeck & Weibull 1987; Dixit & Londregan 1996)

• Favored minorities (Myerson 1993)

• Co-ethnics (Bates 1974)

The Blotto Game

Colonel A10 regiments

Colonel B10 regiments

The Blotto Game

Colonel A

Colonel B

2 2 2 22

4 3 3 0 0

B wins B wins B wins A wins A wins

The Blotto Game

Colonel A

Colonel B

4 3 0 03

0 4 4 1 1

A wins B wins B wins B wins B wins

Key Research Questions

• Do politicians favor their core supporters with disproportionate levels of state goods?

• Is favoritism widespread or does it exist only in a few of the world’s most polarized countries?

• How do electoral rules and institutional incentives affect the likelihood of such outcomes?

Empirical Strategy

• Use satellite images of the earth at night to identify electrified areas

• Identify newly electrified areas around the world from 1992–2003

• Focus on middle-income, ethnically divided societies

• Compare newly electrified regions with underlying ethnic distribution of voters and political leaders

• Compare variations across regimes and electoral institutions

0 20 40 60 80 100

WORLD

Middle East

North Africa

Latin America

East Asia/China

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa 1970 1990 2000

Electrification Rates by Region

% household electrification

Source: International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2002

0

20

40

60

80

100

1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955

% d

wel

ling

units

with

ele

ctrici

ty

Electrifying America, 1920-1956

NONFARMS

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1975

FARMS

Creation of REA

The Earth at Night

• DMSP-OLS satellites have captured images of the entire earth every night since the 1970s– Reveals concentrations of outdoor lights, fires,

and gas flares– High resolution images (43,200 x 21,600 pixels

at a resolution of 2.7 km per pixel)– Annual images created by overlaying all nightly

images and dropping problematic images (cloud cover, aurora, solar glare) and ephemeral lights (fires, fishing boats, other noise)

– Annual time-stable light images available from 1992 to 2003

Lights and Electrical Infrastructure, 1995

0

5

10

15

20

0 5 10 15Electricity generating capacity, ln (million kW)

Ligh

t in

tens

ity, l

n(to

tal l

ight

rad

ianc

e)

N=127 countries. Source: DMSP-OLS; World Bank/Canning Database of World Infrastructure Stocks

Lights and Population by Regime Type

AUTOCRACIES DEMOCRACIES

ln (population per cell)

ln (

tota

l lig

ht

inte

nsit

y p

er

cell)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Uttar PradeshMadhya Pradesh

OrissaMaharashtra

RajasthanBihar

West BengalJharkhandKarnataka

Andhra PradeshAssam

ChhatisgarhGujarat

Himachal PradeshUttaranchalTamil Nadu

PunjabHaryana

Jammu & KashmirMeghalaya

Arunachal PradeshManipur

Source: India Ministry of Power

thousands of villages

ELECTRIFIED UNELECTRIFIED

Village Electrification Rates in India’s States, 2005

India

19921998

2003

Source: NOAA NGDC

Lucknow/Lucknow/KanpurKanpur

Source: Population counts from LandScan 2005; district shapefiles from http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/IN/datalist.html; lights from DMSP-OLS

Lucknow/Kanpur, Lights Lucknow/Kanpur, Lights 19921992

Lucknow/Kanpur, Lights Lucknow/Kanpur, Lights 20032003

Key Outputs

• Global dataset on new electrification at the sub-national level (linked to UN Second Administrative Level Boundaries Dataset)

• Cross-national test and validation of theories of government resource distribution

• Empirical evaluation of claims of ethnic favoritism