The Political Economy of Aid Allocation in Africa: Evidence from Zambia

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takaaki Masaki
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Swing Voters

Abstract:This article utilizes a newly available dataset on the geographical distribution of development projects in Zambia to test whether electoral incentives shape aid allocation at the subnational level. Based on this dataset, it argues that when political elites have limited information to target distributive goods specifically to swing voters, they allocate more donor projects to districts where opposition to the incumbent is strong, as opposed to districts where the incumbent enjoys greater popularity.

‘ARE YOU PLANTING TREES OR ARE YOU PLANTING PEOPLE?’ SQUATTER RESISTANCE AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE MAKING OF A KENYAN POSTCOLONIAL POLITICAL ORDER (c. 1963–78)

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARA MOSKOWITZ
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
International Development ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines squatter resistance to a World Bank-funded forest and paper factory project. The article illustrates how diverse actors came together at the sites of rural development projects in early postcolonial Kenya. It focuses on the relationship between the rural squatters who resisted the project and the political elites who intervened, particularly President Kenyatta. Together, these two groups not only negotiated the reformulation of a major international development program, but they also worked out broader questions about political authority and political culture. In negotiating development, rural actors and political elites decided how resources would be distributed and they entered into new patronage-based relationships, processes integral to the making of the postcolonial political order.

The vulgarity of democracy. Political, pornography, masculinity and politics in Ecuador

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Public Office ◽  
The Public ◽  
Image Objects ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Deviant Sexuality

The Vulgarity of Democracy explores key aesthetics and affective aspects of democracy via a visual ethnographic exploration of political pornography and the public uses of machismo to construct agendas for popular redemption in Guayaquil, Ecuador, during the 1980s. This period was the beginning of a highly conflictive social process as a result of the imposition of neoliberal policies. Its focus is on the life and work of Pancho Jaime (1946-1989), the most controversial and widely known rock promoter and independent journalist. Between 1984 and his assassination in 1989, Jaime’s underground publications used in-depth investigation as well as gossip, pornographic cartoons, and obscene language to comment on democracy and the corruption of political elites. Jaime’s strategy was to denounce the conduct of powerful figures in public office, and caricaturize their deformed bodies as indexes of their supposedly “deviant” sexuality. Following contemporary and comparative discussions on the political economy of images, and the materiality of image-objects, X. Andrade analyzes the production, circulation, and consumption of Pancho Jaime’s political magazines, audience responses to grotesque visual and aggressive textual discourses, and the effects of revealing public secrets about popular understandings of politics.

Internationalization of finance capital in Spain and Turkey: Neoliberal globalization and the political economy of state policies

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 115-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Kutlay
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis study applies the proactive/reactive state framework to the transformation of Spanish and Turkish finance capital in a comparative perspective. It concludes that the “proactive” policies pursued by the Spanish state and the strategic coalition established between political elites and the integrationist segments of finance capital resulted in the heterodox internationalization of Spanish firms, whereas the “reactive” state policies in Turkey, designed in line with orthodox neoliberal dictums, paved the way for an incomplete internationalization. The 2007/2008 crisis, however, demonstrates that the same state may be both proactive and reactive across various policy fields over time. The recent Spanish financial crisis and Turkey's regulatory success after 2001 illustrate this point.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 1316-1334 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADITYA DASGUPTA ◽  
DEVESH KAPUR
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Bureaucratic Behavior

Government programs often fail on the ground because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. Prominent explanations for poor implementation emphasize bureaucratic rent-seeking and capture. This article documents a different pathology that we term bureaucratic overload: local bureaucrats are often heavily under-resourced relative to their responsibilities. We advance a two-step theory explaining why bureaucratic overload is detrimental to implementation as well as why politicians under-invest in local bureaucracy, emphasizing a lack of electoral incentives. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries that measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that (i) officials with fewer resources are worse at implementing rural development programs, plausibly because they are unable to allocate enough time to managerial tasks and (ii) fewer resources are provided in administrative units where political responsibility for implementation is less clear. The findings shed light on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Relief Aid Allocation: Evidence from Madagascar

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 486-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Francken ◽  
Bart Minten ◽  
Johan F.M. Swinnen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aid Allocation

The limits of instrumentalizing disorder: Reassessing the neopatrimonial perspective in the Central African Republic

2018 ◽  
Vol 118 (471) ◽  
pp. 307-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotje de Vries ◽  
Andreas Mehler
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Power Basis

Abstract Assumptions about the political economy of African states predominantly centre on a dominant elite’s ability to stabilize power. A key assertion is that elites maintain clientelistic networks of rents and redistribution and in turn extend their control over their respective territories by instrumentalizing disorder. We challenge the assumption that disorder plays such a functional role. Largely drawing on data and fieldwork from the Central African Republic, we demonstrate the profoundly unproductive consequences of disorder that tend to be overlooked through current approaches to the political economy of African countries. We investigate how disorder impacts three dimensions of effective politics of domination: a set of elite groups that structure power in society, a political economy that redistributes its benefits through formal and informal networks, and the existence of functional centre–periphery ties across a territory. The article shows with regard to the Central African Republic that disorder has produced a small political elite that is largely unable to stabilize its power basis. We argue that certain African states are subject to forms of disorder that political elites cannot turn into an advantage.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Relief Aid Allocation: Evidence from Madagascar

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Francken ◽  
Bart Minten ◽  
Johan F. M. Swinnen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aid Allocation
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document