Do Government expense and Voice and accountability go together across countries?

Across 151 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = +0.51, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.60.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 1996-2024, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.003 (156 countries, 2,965 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is +0.068.

Does Government expense cause Voice and accountability?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Government expense vs. Voice and accountability

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 151 countries, Government expense and Voice and accountability rise and fall together at r = +0.51 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = +0.44, q = 0.0032, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of government expense, 18.1% to 34.3% of GDP, voice and accountability is better by 0.623 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.444 points.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.508p = 2.8e-11 · 151 countries

After adjusting for national income+0.439p = 2.0e-8 · likely range [+0.30, +0.56]

p, allowing for regions4.9e-5standard error 0.043 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.003across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Government expense · % of GDPlink with income +0.44 · moderate

Voice and accountability · index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)link with income +0.58 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	+0.508	2.8e-11	151
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.604	2.2e-16	151
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	+0.439	2.0e-8	151
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	+0.472	1.0e-9	151

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 151 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.069 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.405 (without KIR) to +0.461 (without NRU). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: KIR (-0.033).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	25	+0.53
Europe & Central Asia	47	+0.27
Latin America & Caribbean	24	+0.43
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	13	+0.22
Sub-Saharan Africa	34	+0.75

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	51	+0.63
Middle third	50	+0.32
Richest third	50	+0.46

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	98	+0.40
Muslims	29	+0.01

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	14	+0.49
Never a European colony	16	-0.10
Spain	19	+0.50
United Kingdom	49	+0.46

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.430 after dropping 5 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 29years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.003, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose government expense moved did not tend to see their voice and accountability move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.439for comparison

Within countries-0.015each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.003q = 0.923 · 156 countries

Year-on-year changes+0.068q = 0.046

Read with care.

Almost all of the second indicator's variation is between countries, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

2,965 country-years (one country in one year), 156 countries, 1996–2024, about 19 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 50% for Government expense, 4% for Voice and accountability. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.003. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.06 at lag -4) is higher than the same-year one by 0.06. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data

	% of GDP	index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)	Years
Naoero NRU	104%	0.599	2020, 2024
Kiribati KIR	83.7%	0.973	2023, 2024
Ukraine UKR	65.6%	-0.111	2023, 2024
Marshall Islands MHL	59.4%	0.954	2020, 2024
Palau PLW	59%	1.04	2020, 2024
Timor-Leste TLS	52.5%	0.346	2022, 2024
Greece GRC	47.3%	0.782	2023, 2024
Italy ITA	47.3%	1.07	2023, 2024
France FRA	47.3%	1.15	2023, 2024
Austria AUT	46%	1.41	2023, 2024
Finland FIN	44.9%	1.85	2023, 2024
Slovenia SVN	42.9%	1.06	2023, 2024
Hungary HUN	42.4%	-0.0277	2022, 2024
Luxembourg LUX	42.2%	1.67	2023, 2024
United Kingdom GBR	41.2%	1.3	2023, 2024

World Bank, World Development Indicators
Kaufmann, D. and A. Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank

Sources

Government expense

Government expense (% of GDP)

World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Total central government spending, as a share of GDP: buying, payments to people, subsidies and interest together. From the IMF's Government Finance Statistics. It is the fuller measure of government size, but it covers fewer countries. It counts central government only, so a country with large state and local budgets looks low. About forty fewer countries report it than report government consumption. No "better" direction is set.

Voice and accountability

Voice and Accountability (estimate)

World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2012–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Government expense and Voice and accountability

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Government expense changes Voice and accountability, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.