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Redistribution and the Quality of Government: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2020

Bilyana Petrova
Bilyana Petrova*
Affiliation:
European University Institute
*
*Corresponding author. Email: bilyana.petrova@eui.eu
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Abstract

The welfare state literature has largely ignored the impact of a country's quality of government on its levels of redistribution. Using cross-sectional time-series analysis of twenty-one Central and Eastern European countries, this article shows that environments characterized by higher levels of corruption, rampant bureaucratic inefficiency and ineffective enforcement of the rule of law are associated with lower levels of redistribution. Poor government directly affects the supply side of the redistribution process by hindering countries’ ability to allocate funds to redistribution and deliver them to their beneficiaries. Contrary to existing demand-oriented perspectives, the proposed causal mechanism does not blame lower redistribution on the lack of public support for the welfare state. Rather, it focuses on the capacity of states to adopt and implement inequality-reducing policies. The results are robust to numerous extensions and model specifications.

Keywords

redistributionquality of governmentcorruptionpost-communist Europe
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 374 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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