Date
2011
Publisher city
Munich
Publisher
University Library of Munich
Collection title
MPRA Paper
Dewey
Croissance et développement économiques
Sujet
Ghana; Africa; elections; ethnic; Public goods
JEL code
D72; O55; R53
Author
André, Pierre
Mesplé-Somps, Sandrine
Type
Document de travail / Working paper
Item number of pages
34
Abstract (EN)
The body of literature on purely democratic countries can sometimes fail to explain the behavior of government in semi-democratic African countries. Empirical and theoretical political economic papers find that public funds target ruling party supporters and swing districts. Our results, however, suggest that the opposite was true of Ghana. We observe that pro-government districts received less public investment when the NDC was in power. We posit that this finding is partially driven by the government's will to curry favor with opposition politicians. Indeed, in addition to pursuing its electoral objectives, the government of an emerging democracy may fear political instability and keep the lid on potential unrest by bargaining with opposition leaders. Our analysis also shows that, when controlling for votes and other covariates (including wealth, urbanization and density), public goods allocation is not driven by ethnic group targeting either.