Political Budgetary Cycles in Autocratic Redistribution

• Author: Kangwook Han
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Date: 01 April 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211036038

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(5) 727–756

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211036038

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Political Budgetary

Cycles in Autocratic

Redistribution

Kangwook Han

1



Abstract

While political budgetary cycles in democracies have been rigorously studied

for the past several decades, surprisingly little is known about electorally

motivated policy manipulation in authoritarian regimes. This study analyzes

how dictators strategically change the priorities of autocratic policies to

cultivate electoral dominance even when election results are predetermined. I

argue that dictators spend more money on redistributive policies in election

periods. Using budgetary spending data from 63 autocratic countries between

1972 and 2015, this paper presents cross-national evidence of the existence of

an electoral cycle in autocratic redistribution. Analyzing Afrobarometer

survey data from 18 African autocracies between 2008 and 2015, this study

also finds that citizens’evaluations of redistributive policy fluctuate according

to the electoral calendar. These findings contribute to the literature on

authoritarian politics by exploring macro- and micro-level mechanisms

through which authoritarian rulers improvise policy manipulation to cultivate

electoral dominance.

Keywords

redistribution, authoritarian politics, political budgetary cycle, election

1

Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Jeonbuk National University,Jeonju, Republic of

Korea

Corresponding Author:

Kangwook Han, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Jeonbuk National University, 567

Baekje-daero, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si, Jeollabuk-do 54896, Republic of Korea.

Email: kangwook@jbnu.ac.kr

In July 1977, South Korean President Park Chung-hee introduced the

country’sfirst national health care program, which provided coverage to

private firms with more than 500 employees. In the following year, Park’s

party (Democratic Republican Party) defeated the main opposition party, the

New Democratic Party, and maintained a supermajority in the legislature.

1

In

January 2008, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen established a social se-

curity scheme to provide social security benefits for civil servants. In the same

year, Hun Sen’s party (Cambodian People’s Party) won a clear majority of

legislative seats. Park and Hun Sen are not the only two autocratic leaders who

have reallocated government spending to cultivate political dominance in

subsequent elections. Several studies have identified a similar pattern of

increased budgetary spending during election periods in Egypt (Blaydes,

2011), Malaysia (Pepinsky, 2007), Mexico (Magaloni, 2006), Peru (Schady,

2000), and Russia (Akhmedov & Zhuravskaya, 2004).

These illustrative cases suggest that political budgetary cycles (PBCs) may

be present in autocracies as well as democracies. While the size and type of

PBC have been subject to rigorous research in recent decades, scholars have

only recently begun to study autocratic PBCs in a cross-national setting

(Geddes et al., 2018;Higashijima, 2020). However, these studies do not

sufficiently discuss how dictators strategically shift their policy priorities to

maximize electoral support. Instead, they focus on overall governmental

expenditures (Geddes et al., 2018) and deficits (Higashijima, 2020) to capture

PBCs in authoritarian regimes. In other words, they neglect to consider the

fact that voters usually care more about specific policy changes rather than

increases in overall government spending (Chang, 2008). More importantly,

an increase in the total government budget does not precisely capture electoral

fluctuations in the provision of government transfers to citizens. It is also

possible that dictators attempt to increase the total government budget in order

to spend more on their repressive apparatus rather than instituting voter-

friendly policies around election years. This study advances the authoritarian

politics literature by asking how and in what time frame authoritarian rulers

allocate limited government resources on specific policy areas.

This study specifically focuses on redistributive policies to discuss PBCs in

authoritarian regimes.

2

Redistributive policies include government policy

programs that aim to immediately restore or increase citizens’disposable

income. To reward political supporters, dictators are more likely to deliver

redistributive benefits even without a strict requirement for such transfers than

their democratic counterparts (Dodlova et al., 2017). They often provide more

generous benefits, even within same redistributive policy programs, in

election periods than non-election periods (de Waal, 1997). Dictators allocate

government resources to redistributive policy schemes to boost electoral

support in the short term. For example, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

routinized increases in pension benefits around election periods. He also

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