Political dynasties exist in practically every type of democracy, but take different forms in different places. Yet the types of dynastic structures have remained unexplored. We argue that horizontal dynasties—multiple members from the same political family holding different political offices concurrently—affect policymaking by replacing potential political rivals, who may oppose an incumbent’s policy choices, with a member of the family. But in developing countries, the policy change that accrues from dynastic status may not lead to higher levels of economic development. We test this argument’s implications in the Philippines. Using a close elections regression discontinuity design on a sample of mayors, we show that (i) horizontally dynastic mayors have higher levels of government spending, (ii) direct institutional constraints are the mechanism that drives this core result, and (iii) horizontally dynastic mayors do not lead to higher economic growth economic growth or lower poverty.
AldrichJ. (1995). Why parties? The origin and transformation of political parties in America. University of Chicago Press.
2.
AlesinaA.RosenthalH. (1995). Partisan politics, divided government, and the economy. Cambridge University Press.
3.
AltJ. E.LowryR. C. (1994). Divided government, fiscal institutions, and budget deficits: Evidence from the states. American Political Science Review, 88(4), 811-828.
4.
AsakoY.IidaT.MatsubayashiT.UedaM. (2015). Dynastic politicians: theory and evidence from Japan. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 16(1), 5-32.
5.
AshworthS. (2012). Electoral accountability: Recent theoretical and empirical work. Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 183-201.
6.
AtkinsonJ.HickenA.RavanillaN.MendozaR.BejaE.TeehankeeJ.ViñaA. L.Villamejor-MendozaM. (2015). Building inclusive democracies in ASEAN (pp. 74-96). Anvil Chapter Pork & Typhoons: The Influence of Political Connections on Disaster Response.
7.
BirdsallN. (1996). Public spending on higher education in developing countries: Too much or too little?Economics of Education Review, 15(4), 407-419.
8.
BoasT. C.HidalgoF. D.RichardsonN. P. (2014). The spoils of victory: campaign donations and government contracts in Brazil. The Journal of Politics, 76(2), 415-429.
9.
BragancaA.FerrazC.RiosJ. (2015). Political dynasties and the. Quality of Government.
ChattopadhyayR.DufloE. (2004). Women as policy makers: evidence from a randomized policy experiment in India. Econometrica, 72(5), 1409-1443.
12.
ChhibberP. (2013). Dynastic parties. Party Politics, 19(2), 277-295.
13.
CoronelS. (2004). The rulemakers: How the wealthy and well-born dominate congress. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
14.
CoxG.McCubbinsM. (2001). The institutional determinants of economic policy outcomes. In HaggardS.McCubbinsM. (Eds), Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy (21–63). Cambridge University Press.
15.
CruzC. (2019). Social networks and the targeting of vote buying. Comparative Political Studies, 52(3), 382-411.
16.
CruzC.SchneiderC. J. (2017). Foreign aid and undeserved credit claiming. American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 396-408.
17.
CruzC.LabonneJ.QuerubÍnP. (2017). Politician family networks and electoral outcomes: evidence from the Philippines. American Economic Review, 107(10), 3006-3037.
18.
CruzC.LabonneJ.QuerubínP. (2020). Social network structures and the politics of public goods provision: evidence from the Philippines. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 486-501.
19.
De MesquitaB.SmithA.MorrowJ.SiversonR. (2005). The logic of political survival.
20.
DevarajanS.SwaroopV.ZouH.-F. (1996). The composition of public expenditure and economic growth. Journal of Monetary Economics, 37(2), 313-344.
21.
DinceccoM. (2017). State capacity and economic development: Present and past. Cambridge University Press.
22.
DittmarJ.MeisenzahlR. (2019). Public goods institutions, human capital, and growth: evidence from German history. The Review of Economic Studies, 87(2), 959-996.
23.
DixitA.LondreganJ. (1996). The determinants of success of special interests in redistributive politics. The Journal of Politics, 58(4), 1132-1155.
24.
DulayD.GoL. (2021). Replication data for: When running for office runs in the family: Horizontal dynasties, policy and development in the Philippines. doi: 10.7910/DVN/WILS4Y.
25.
EsguerraJ. (2001). Budget dictators.
26.
FafchampsM.LabonneJ. (2017). Do politicians' relatives get better jobs? Evidence from municipal elections. The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 33(2), 268-300.
27.
FeganB. (1993). Entrepreneurs in votes and violence: three generations of a peasant political family. In McCoyA. (Ed), An anarchy of families: State and family in the Philippines (pp. 33-108). University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
28.
FeinsteinB. D. (2011). The dynasty advantage: family ties in congressional elections. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 35(4), 571-598.
FivaJ. H.SmithD. M. (2018). Political dynasties and the incumbency advantage in party-centered environments. American Political Science Review, 112(3), 706-712.
31.
FolkeO.PerssonT.RickneJ. (2017a). Dynastic political rents? Economic benefits to relatives of top politicians. Economic Journal, 127(605), 495-517.
32.
FolkeO.RickneJ.SmithD. (2017b). Gender and dynastic political recruitment: Theory and evidence. Comparative Political Selection, 54, 339-371.
33.
GambettaD. (1996). The Sicilian Mafia: The business of private protection. Harvard University Press.
34.
GeorgeS. (2019). Like father, like son? The effect of political dynasties on economic development. Working Paper.
35.
GeysB.SmithD. (2017). Political dynasties in democracies: causes, consequences and remaining puzzles. Economic Journal, 127(605), 446-454.
36.
HendersonJ. V.StoreygardA.WeilD. N. (2012). Measuring economic growth from outer space. American Economic Review, 102(2), 994-1028.
37.
HickenA. (2009). Building party systems in developing democracies. Cambridge University Press.
ImbensG.KalyanaramanK. (2012). Optimal bandwidth choice for the regression discontinuity estimator. The Review of Economic Studies, 79(3), 933-959.
41.
LabonneJ.ParsaS.QuerubinP. (2017). Political dynasties, term limits and female political empowerment: Evidence from the Philippines. NBER Working Papers 26431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
42.
LakeD. A.BaumM. A. (2001). The invisible hand of democracy. Comparative political studies, 34(6), 587-621.
43.
LarcineseV.RizzoL.TestaC. (2006). Allocating the U.S. Federal budget to the states: the impact of the president. The Journal of Politics, 68(2), 447-456.
44.
LeeD. S. (2008). Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 675-697.
45.
ManacsaR. C.TanA. C. (2005). Manufacturing parties: Re-examining the transient nature of Philippines political parties. Party Politics, 11(3), 748-765.
46.
MarshallJ. (2019). When can close election RDDs identify the effects of winning politician characteristics?
47.
McCoyA. (2009). An anarchy of families. University of Wisconsin Press.
48.
McCraryJ. (2008). Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 698-714.
49.
MendozaR. U.BejaE. L.Jr.VenidaV. S.YapD. B. (2016). Political dynasties and poverty: Measurement and evidence of linkages in the Philippines. Oxford Development Studies, 44(2), 189-201.
50.
MendozaR.JaminolaL.IIIYapJ. (2019). From fat to obese: Political dynasties after the 2019 midterm elections.
51.
MontinolaG. R. (1999). Politicians, parties, and the persistence of weak states: Lessons from the Philippines. Development and Change, 30(4), 739-774.
52.
MukhopadhyayD. (2014). Warlords, strongman governors, and the state in Afghanistan. Cambridge University Press.
53.
OsterE. (2017). Unobservable selection and coefficient stability: theory and evidence. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 35(1), 1-18.
54.
PierskallaJ.SchultzA.WibbelsE., et al. (2017). Order, distance, and local development over the long-run. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 12(4), 375-404.
55.
QuerubinP. (2016). Family and politics: dynastic persistence in the Philippines. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 11(2), 151-181.
56.
QuimpoN. G. (2007). The Philippines: political parties and corruption. Southeast Asian Affairs, 2007(1), 277-294.
57.
RajkumarA. S.SwaroopV. (2008). Public spending and outcomes: does governance matter?Journal of Development Economics, 86(1), 96-111.
58.
RavanillaN. (2017). Motives in pork distribution: partisan bias or patronage?
59.
Rose-AckermanS.PalifkaB. (2016). Corruption and government: Causes, consequences, and reform. Cambridge University Press.
60.
SidelJ. (1999). Capital, coercion, and crime: Bossism in the Philippines. Stanford University Press.
61.
TalabongR. (2019). Duterte’s metro manila traffic solution?Reclaim Public Roads.
62.
TreismanD. (2000). Decentralization and inflation: commitment, collective action, or continuity?. American Political Science Review, 94(4), 837-857.
63.
TsebelisG. (1995). Decision making in political systems: veto players in presidentialism, parliamentarism, multicameralism and multipartyism. British Journal of Political Science, 25(3), 289-325.
64.
TusalemR. F.Pe-AguirreJ. J. (2013). The effect of political dynasties on effective democratic governance: Evidence from the Philippines. Asian Politics & Policy, 5(3), 359-386.
65.
Van CoppenolleB. (2017). Political dynasties in the UK House of commons: the null effect of narrow electoral selection. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 42(3), 449-475.
66.
WeingastB. R.ShepsleK. A.JohnsenC. (1981). The political economy of benefits and costs: A neoclassical approach to distributive politics. Journal of Political Economy, 89(4), 642-664.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
