17
Figures II and III, meanwhile, present the effect of Scope on growth. In each of these
cases, an expected value calculation is presented in place of a partial derivative because
the resulting graphical representations are more intuitive.
17
Figure II presents the ideal
type of the pure individual executive, while Figure III presents its counterpart of the
qualified individual executive. In both cases, it is evident that the expected concave
relationship between scope of government activity and economic growth is most readily
apparent at low levels of ethnic diversity: the peak of performance is located at roughly
the midpoint of the scale, where productive public goods and services are provided but
the regulatory environment has not yet ballooned. Yet increases in ethnic diversity in the
presence of a pure individual executive (Figure II) are associated with increasingly lower
growth rates, and as the scope of government activity increases growth decreases. This
finding is consistent with the theory of neo-patrimonialism that the increased regulatory
and government “service” atmosphere is in reality a rent-seeking haven for supporters of
the individual executive, who disperses spoils. In the presence of a more collective
executive (Figure III), the situation is apparently reversed, with increasingly diverse
societies performing better as the scope of government activity is reduced – diverse
societies under collegial governments can, it seems, make up for some of the other
disadvantages associated with ethnic diversity by minimizing the opportunities for rent-
seeking behavior.
17
In each case, the calculation is given a non-African, non-high performance Asian, non-landlocked, non-
legitimate country at mean values of initial income ($1620 per capita), percentage of land area in the
tropics (54 percent), and percentage of road network paved (47 percent).
Convention