How Does Politics Affect Quality of Public Transport Infrastructure?

Abstract

While prior studies have investigated the impacts of political factors such as the ideological stance on quality of public infrastructure, there is a paucity of research on the political effects of re-election success, party fragmentation (political power), and the formation of new electoral consistency on quality of public transport infrastructure, which is represented in this paper by road maintenance efficiency. We employ an instrumental variable approach to mitigate a potential reverse causality bias inherent in literature. Our empirical results show that local governments whose political representatives were re-elected give rise to lower road maintenance efficiency. Local governments with new electoral constituencies report a higher road maintenance efficiency.