Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: 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.