Beyond the Long-term Infrastructure Project: Survival Analysis on Monetary Institution and Capital City Relocation

Past studies on regime change, political business cycles, and long-term infrastructure projects have shown that regime change can significantly shift policy priorities and approaches to long- term projects. Leaders aiming for survival will leverage available resources and policies to retain power, ensure regime sustainability, maintain policy coherence, and secure project continuity, especially for long-term infrastructure projects extending beyond their tenure. Most existing literature has discussed how leaders use resources to maximise power retention. However, the impact of these resources and policies on the success of long-term infrastructure projects has not been adequately tested, particularly regarding the economic impact of capital city relocation and the role of macroeconomic policies in accelerating this impact. We argue that expanding monetary policy instruments for project continuity and policy realignment can accelerate the achievement of capital relocation goals. Using Cox regression survival analysis on 16 countries that relocated their capital between 1956 and 2023, we assessed the time required to achieve targeted goals and examined macroeconomic factors influencing these timelines. Our results indicate a 75% chance of achieving success within 50 years, 50% within 30 years, and 25% within 20 years. The expansion of monetary policy instruments accelerates project goal achievement. However, since our study focuses on political-economic aspects, future research needs to include other variables, such as political stability, party polarisation, and opposition autonomy regarding policy realignment and long-term project continuity.