Date
2011
Ville de l'éditeur
Munich
Nom de l'éditeur
University Library of Munich
Titre de la collection
MPRA Paper
Indexation documentaire
Croissance et développement économiques
Subject
Ghana; Africa; elections; ethnic; Public goods
Code JEL
D72; O55; R53
Auteur
André, Pierre
Mesplé-Somps, Sandrine
Type
Document de travail / Working paper
Nombre de pages du document
34
Résumé en anglais
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.