Turnout, political strength, and cost efficiency in Spanish municipalities of the autonomous region of Galicia: Evidence from an alternative stochastic frontier approach

Abstract

The scientific literature has used different theoretical arguments and methodological alternatives to attempt to demonstrate whether both electoral turnout and the strength of the incumbent majority influence the cost efficiency of municipal governments, reaching inconclusive results. We provide new arguments and employ a methodology that overcomes some of the limitations of the previous studies. Our research confirms a direct association between electoral turnout and municipal cost efficiency in the Spanish region of Galicia. Moreover, the strength of the incumbent majority has a significant negative effect on cost efficiency, contradicting the frequently used explanations that are based on government inaction or the common-pool problem. KEYWORDS cost efficiency, electoral turnout, municipalities, political strength, stochastic frontier JEL CLASSIFICATION

The Role of Women in Local Governments: An Analysis of Efficiency in Spain

“…This study is based on previous literature to select input and output variables (Narbón-Perpiñá and De Witte 2018a, 2018b), and specifically on the recent work of Buch-Gómez and Cabaleiro-Casal (2020). These scholars use a methodology that take into account the socioeconomic and political characteristics of the municipality in estimating efficiency, while the traditional methodology does not consider the context (Greene 2008).…”

“…It has been retrieved from the Settlement of Local Budgets that is published by the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration. Capital expenditure is not considered as an input (so total expenditure neither) because they are highly volatile since they are mainly investments in infrastructure and many of them come from multi-year capital expenses that are only registered when they are finished (Buch-Gómez and Cabaleiro-Casal 2020). Then, the current expenditure is the best indicator to represent the resources employed for local service provision (Narbón-Perpiñá and De Witte 2018a), at least the only one that allows a reasonable and accurate evaluation of the efficiency, despite it is a partial evaluation.…”

“…Exogenous variables have been previously described as independent and control variables. All of them parametrise the inefficiency distribution and the idiosyncratic error, except Density, which is included only in the distribution of the idiosyncratic error, because it just affects the input-output relationship (Buch-Gómez and Cabaleiro-Casal 2020). Another advantage of this model is the relaxation of homoscedastic assumption for u and v of the original Battese and Coelli's (1988) model.…”

“…This study uses a set of input and output indicators that have been extensively used in literature to represent the efficiency of local governments (see Narbón-Perpiñá and De Witte 2018a). Concretely, current expenditure is used as input, while outputs represent a wide set of public services that Spanish local governments have to provide by law (lighting, waste collection and treatment, street cleaning, drinking water supply, sewer systems and drains, paving and accesses to the municipality, parks and green areas, public libraries, police and protection services, social services, sports facilities, public transport, and environmental protection services), according to Buch-Gómez and Cabaleiro-Casal (2020). As outputs (public services) are established by law, local governments should be focused on minimising the cost of providing such public services (input).…”

Administrative Cost of US Counties and Local Context Dependence

“…Researchers have empirically examined the impact of amalgamation (Blom-Hansen et al, 2014), privatization (or outsourcing) (Bel and Miralles, 2003), and inter-government cooperation (Bel and Warner, 2015;Blaka, 2017;Dijkgraaf and Gradus, 2013) on government cost-efficiency. Researchers have also examined the impact of many political factors, which include political ideology, political competition, political participation (Buch-Gomez and Cabaleiro-Casal, 2020;Narbon-Perpina et al, 2020), political accountability (Bruns and Himmler, 2011), political transparency (Guillamón and Cuadrado-Ballesteros, 2021), the form of municipal government (the mayor-council form, the mayor-manager form, and whether the mayor is elected) (Grossman et al, 1999), and the electoral system (Baraldi, 2008;Santolini, 2017). 4 Among the limited number of studies examining county government expenditures, Morgan and Kickham (1999) find that the change of government forms has no effect on the fiscal behavior of the US county governments, which contradicts the strong association documented by Benton (2003) and McDonald (2015).…”