Country Size and Government Effectiveness in Africa: Transcending the Mean Analysis

Improving government performance in Africa remains an enduring issue. We used panel data from 1996 to 2019 and the method of moment quantile regression (MMQR) technique to provide new perspectives on the relationship between population size and government effectiveness across a panel of large and small African countries. We also examined whether the impact depends on the conditional distribution of government effectiveness. The impact and significance of the estimated coefficients suggest that large and small populations have strong but differentiated effects on government effectiveness in Africa. The results imply that implementing a “one-size-fits-all” strategy to improve government performance in Africa that treats countries in the region as homogeneous units is unlikely to be effective. Strategies should be tailored to address country-specific asymmetries. The findings also emphasize the importance of heterogeneity in government effectiveness in population size–government performance interactions, which tends to be neglected in public administration theory and practice.