Anaxagorou, C., Efthyvoulou, G. and Sarantides, V. orcid.org/0000-0001-9096-4505 (2020) Electoral motives and the subnational allocation of foreign aid in sub-Saharan Africa. European Economic Review, 127. 103430. ISSN 0014-2921
Abstract
This paper examines how electoral motives shape the subnational allocation of foreign aid commitments by employing a newly constructed geocoded dataset for 14 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000-2012. Our results provide strong evidence of a core voter strategy: African leaders diverting Chinese aid towards regions with a high concentration of political supporters. However, no evidence of such preferential treatment is found for World Bank aid, suggesting that aid from traditional donors is less vulnerable to political manipulation. Our results also reveal that checks and balances in recipient countries are an important mediating factor of aid misallocation: while copartisan regions receive larger amounts of Chinese aid in environments with weak checks and balances, these effects disappear when stronger checks and balances are in place. This paper also offers case study evidence from Ghana. Exploiting the 2009 regime change in Ghana and using a difference-in-differences framework, we provide further support of copartisan targeting and confirm that Chinese aid is more manipulable than World Bank aid in this respect.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | foreign aid; elections; Africa; World Bank; China; Ghana |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Mar 2020 08:36 |
Last Modified: | 03 Dec 2021 11:06 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103430 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:158622 |