Inhibitory Institutions: The Tradeoffs of Public Goods Quantity and Quality

Governments frequently invest in public goods that citizens don’t want, yet voters hesitate to punish politicians who build useless or corrupt projects. I introduce the concept of inhibitory institutions—rules that allow state or societal actors to review, obstruct, or veto public investments before they are approved—and argue that they improve public goods quality at the cost of reduced quantity. This quantity-quality tradeoff binds most tightly when bureaucrats enjoy career autonomy from politicians and political competition encourages institutional enforcement. I illustrate the tradeoff through case studies of metro projects in Bogotá and Lima, where divergent institutional conditions led to contrasting outcomes for the quantity and quality of construction. Quantitative evidence from local infrastructure projects in Colombia suggests that political alliances to bypass inhibitory rules increase spending but reduce quality. At a time when observers want to cut procedural checks to get things built, this article underscores the risks for what gets built.