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Democracy to the road: the political economy of potholes

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  • Albert Saiz

Abstract

Are dictatorships more prone to build and maintain roads? This paper identifies a puzzling fact: countries that are more democratic tend to have roads in worse conditions than less democratic countries. Using lagged values of a democracy index to instrument for democracy in 1980 yields higher estimates of the magnitude of the association between democracy and bad roads. Instruments based on climate, population, and education yield similar results. The evidence points to a negative causal relationship from democracy to road quality. The author also finds that changes to a more democratic government are associated with slower growth of the road network. The author advances four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that can explain the results and find support for one of them: dictatorships prefer a better highway network ready for external and internal military intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Albert Saiz, 2002. "Democracy to the road: the political economy of potholes," Working Papers 02-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:02-17
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    Cited by:

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    2. Anja Breitwieser & Katharina Wick, 2013. "What We Miss By Missing Data: Aid Effectiveness Revisited," Vienna Economics Papers vie1302, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.

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