Políticas sociales, concentración geográfica y sistemas electorales

• Autores: Ignacio Jurado, Sandra León
• Localización: Cuadernos económicos de ICE, ISSN 0210-2633, ISSN-e 2340-9037, Nº 85, 2013 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Temas actuales de economía política), págs. 123-142
• Idioma: español
• DOI: 10.32796/cice.2013.85.6055
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    La literatura sobre el Estado de Bienestar ha asumido frecuentemente que los beneficiarios de polí- ticas sociales se distribuyen homogéneamente, ignorando que el gasto público pueden tener receptores concentrados en determinadas regiones. En ese caso, las políticas sociales nacionales son en realidad políticas con fuertes sesgos regionales. Ante esto, un político racional tendrá en cuenta la distribución geográfica de los destinatarios antes de formular una política. En este artículo aplicamos este marco teórico para analizar los niveles de provisión de dos políticas que tienden a ser consideradas como políticas nacionales: las prestaciones por desempleo y las pensiones de jubilación. Para ello, analizamos cómo afecta la concentración geográfica de los beneficiarios, teniendo en cuenta los distintos sistemas electorales. Los resultados muestran que cuando los destinatarios están concentrados geográficamente, los sistemas electorales mayoritarios incentivan su provisión, mientras que esta decrece en sistemas electorales proporcionales.

  • English

    The literature on the welfare state has often assumed that social policy recipients are homogenously distributed across a country. It has been overlooked that public expenditures may have potential beneficiaries that might be concentrated in certain regions. Therefore, national social policies, which are not geographically targeted, are actually policies with strong regional biases. Given this, rational politicians should take into account the geographic distribution of recipients before formulating a policy. We apply this theoretical framework to analyze the provision of unemployment and old age benefits, which tend to be considered as paradigmatic national policies. We show that the recipients� geographical concentration accounts for different patterns of social policy provision between electoral systems. The empirical analyses show that, when recipients are concentrated, majoritarian electoral systems encourage the provision of these policies, while they decrease in proportional electoral systems.

    Keywords: social policies, geographic concentration, electoral systems.

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