Political Budget Cycle: A Sub-National Evidence from Pakistan

The use of public funds for re-election around election times is a long-debated subject in distributive politics. The empirical literature on the existence of the political budget cycles is mixed. This paper attempts to find the political budget cycle in a developing country context. We have used development spending data of 29 districts of the Punjab province of Pakistan over the period 2000–2017. The study has found significant evidence for the political budget cycle in our data. The cycles are not only systematic but also go beyond the election year. Spending is systematically reduced in post-election years and increased gradually in subsequent years.