While it is widely recognized that electoral competition can have a major influence on
public spending decisions, there has been little effort to consider whether the move to
multiparty elections in African countries in recent years has led to a redistribution of public
expenditures between social groups. This is a question relevant both for debates about African
politics and for broader discussions about the effect of democratic institutions on policy
outcomes. I develop a hypothesis, illustrated with a simple game-theoretic model, which
suggests that the need to obtain an electoral majority may have prompted African governments
to devote greater resources to primary schools. I test this proposition using panel data on
electoral competition and education spending in thirty-five African countries. The results show
that democratization has indeed been associated with greater spending on primary education,
and that governments subject to electoral competition have shifted resources towards primary
schools, away from other items in the education budget. These findings are robust to controls
for unobserved country effects, and they are also supported by evidence from recent country
cases.
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Convention