Partisan Politics and Public Spending
Thomas R. Cusack

Partisan politics' role in shaping public policy is a contentious issue. Traditionally, scholars have divided into two major schools of thought on this question. One of these schools suggests that partisan politics plays little if any role in how governments in modern industrialized democracies shape public programs and finance them. The opposing school attributes central importance to the ideological differences that obtain between groups within society and the parties that represent these groups.

Critical here is the left-right dimension on which differing class interests are seen as pivotal. Parties competing for votes orient their programs to serve these different interests; they will act to implement these programs if and when they come into government. Complicating this debate is the argument that through the increased exposure to the international economic system a loss of national autonomy in fiscal policy making has occurred which in turn radically reduces or eliminates the latitude needed for ideological preferences to play a role in shaping government budgets.

This paper addresses these debates by focusing on one aspect of public policy, governmental spending, and attempts to ascertain the role that partisan politics plays in altering these spending levels. The analysis covers over three decades of data on the development of the public sectors in 16 OECD countries.

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26 pages