Partisan politics and Public finance: Changes in public spending in Zimbabwe

The partisan politics model of public policy is based on the view that the ideological preferences of the ruling parties are significant drivers of the level of government spending. Political parties that favor redistribution increase government spending whilst parties that prefer the working of the market system reduce government spending. A combination of the preferences of voters and political parties shape policy outputs such as public spending (Wittman, 1983; Keech, 1995). The opposing school attributes that public spending is shaped by variable economic, technological and demographic imperatives (Cusack, 1997). Partisan politics is at best marginal. 

Majority of voters or parties’ grassroots support is made up of lower income groups and labor which prefer a large and active state. The upper income groups and capital prefer a minimized role of the state in shaping the market operations and outcomes. Zanu PF preferred a state heavily engaged in regulating the market and using public finances to equalize the outcomes of market operations. The Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was meant to liberalize the economy but failed because the state preferred a tightly controlled economic system. The upper income groups are concerned with limiting the size of government and its control over financial resources. Parties compete for votes tends to focus on the interests of the different groups and they will focus on those interests when they implement their programs when in government. While economic, technological, and demographic factors are not unimportant in shaping policy, the place of partisan politics is central. There is a view that partisan politics plays little if any role in how governments in modern industrialized democracies (developed economies) shape public programs and finance them. In developing countries like Zimbabwe generally the partisan politics model is dominant.

In Zimbabwe partisan politics plays a major role in altering public spending levels. Partisan politics dominate the allocation of resources to policies such as land reform or presidential agricultural input scheme. The levels of public spending where the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe participated in quasi-fiscal operations were all motivated by partisan politics where the central bank took a role to fund tractors, fuel etc. to support the land reform. Budgets deficits are driven by partisan politics for instance to fund blue print programs such as ZimAsset motivated to fulfil election promises and often economic fundamentals and principles are ignored in the allocation of resources. This month it was reported in the news that the president ordered the reinstatement of more than 2000 Zanu PF youths who were struck off the government payroll following an audit report which unearthed ghost workers. The minister of finance’s proposals to cut salaries and suspend bonuses in 2016 hit a snag because of the partisan politics model which dominates the allocation of public spending. Whilst earlier the International Monetary Fund had reported to be happy with reforms everything changed when the proposals of the finance minister where turned down. The government’s quest for reforms was dominated by the party’s ideological preferences in the end there was a u-turn by the government and reforms were discarded.