The literature has identified that countries with higher levels of openness tend to present a larger government sector … between openness and the size of government might be mediated by the quality of its public sector. While countries with weak … government capabilities will tend to rely on spending expansions to deal with trade-induced volatility, countries with stronger …

expenditures. In practice, forms of government vary greatly, and budget institutions -the rules according to which budgets are … in shaping the size of government. This hypothesis is tested on a broad cross-section of countries, presidentialism is … found to have a negative impact on government size only when executive discretion in the budget process is low (that is, in …