Cabinet Size and Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Wehner, Joachim ; Mills, Linnea

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: MINISTER;    GOVERNANCE;    CABINET;    CLIENTELISM;    CORRUPTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9232
RP-ID  :  WPS9232

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

There is frequent public and mediaconcern over the cost of bloated cabinets in manySub-Saharan African countries. Scholarship on eliteclientelism links cabinet positions with corruption andpractices that undermine sound policy making. This paperpresents new data on the number of ministers in Africangovernments and shows a negative association with severalmeasures of governance. The associations are robust in aregression framework that exploits within-country variationover time and accounts for various potential confounders.These patterns suggest that policy makers, donors,investors, and citizens should pay close attention to thenumber of ministers appointed to the cabinet. Although thepaper cautions against simplistic policy prescriptions, asizable increase in the number of ministers is likely badnews for governance.