Political leadership and the quality of public goods and services: Does religion matter?
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Political leadership and the quality of public goods and services: Does religion matter? Aloys L. Prinz1 · Christian J. Sander1 Received: 1 April 2020 / Accepted: 22 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Despite some indications to the contrary, religion still plays an important role in contemporary society. In this paper, the association between religion and the quality of public goods and services, measured by the so-called “delivery quality” index of the Worldwide Governance Indicators project, is empirically investigated. Besides religion, different political regimes may also have a crucial impact on the quality of public goods and services. In the paper, a distinction is made between theocratic, autocratic and democratic systems. It is hypothesized that the delivery quality is lower in theocratic and autocratic regimes than in democracies. In addition, religious diversity may enhance the quality of public goods and services in otherwise autocratic and democratic regimes. The level of religious goods and services provision should be lower in religiously diverse societies, because the costs of these goods are higher due to a lack of economies of scale. This may leave more potential for the provision of high-quality public goods and services by the state. These hypotheses are tested empirically with data from 190 countries. The empirical estimates confirm that both theocratic and autocratic regimes provide lower average delivery quality than democracies. Furthermore, a positive association of religious leadership with delivery quality is found in strict autocracies. Greater religious diversity is thus linked to a better quality of pubic goods and services in democracies, but not in autocracies. Keywords Quality of public goods and services · Democracy · Autocracy · Religious leadership · Religious diversity JEL Classification D72 · H11 · H41 · Z12
* Aloys L. Prinz [email protected]‑muenster.de 1
Institute of Public Economics, University of Münster, Wilmergasse 6‑8, 48143 Münster, Germany
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A. L. Prinz, C. J. Sander
1 Introduction As a reaction to citizens’ dissatisfaction with the political leadership in Saudi Arabia, the new crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, announced a series of reforms for modernizing the state and reducing the influence of religious fundamentalists (Lacroix 2019). Meanwhile, protesters in Iran also demand restrictions on muslim clerics’ say in political issues (Abdoh-Tabrizi and Shahi 2020). In this paper, we engage with the general question of how the interaction of religion with the political system of a country is associated with government performance. More precisely, we present a comparative analysis of the quality of public goods and services in alternative political regimes. We thereby differentiate between religious and non-religious forms of non-democratic leadership. Furthermore, we provide an argument linking religious diversity to the quality of public goods and services. It is well-known that religions, as cultural institutions, have su
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