Does decentralization encourage pro-poor targeting? Evidence from Kenya’s constituencies development fund

How Effective are Decentralized Anti‐poverty Programs?

“…Over all, this paper makes two broad contributions to a better understanding of the relationship between decentralization and poverty alleviation. First, the effectiveness of decentralization on poverty alleviation are still highly contested, as there is abundant and compelling evidence supporting both sides (Crook and Sverrisson, 2001;Alderman, 2002;Boret et al, 2021;Harris and Posner, 2022). Using the example of NPC, we show that decentralization can have a significant positive impact on poverty reduction if the program is designed appropriately to prevent potential flaws, such as misuse of funds and unfocused objectives.…”

“…1 There are two main reasons why decentralization may fail to reduce poverty. First, as numerous cross-national experiences have shown, decentralization has limited effects on poverty alleviation per se unless it is conceived and designed for this specific purpose (Crook and Sverrisson, 2001;Alderman, 2002;Carlitz, 2017;Harris and Posner, 2022).…”

“…Despite the advantages mentioned above, empirical evidence on the impact of decentralization on poverty reduction is inconclusive. For instance, even though evidence from West Bengal (India), Kenya, Indonesia, and Albania found that decentralization has led to poverty reduction (Crook and Sverrisson, 2001;Alderman, 2002;Boret et al, 2021), there are also many other studies that found no effects, or even negative effects, of decentralization on poverty alleviation (Kilic et al, 2015;Carlitz, 2017;Harris and Posner, 2022). 1 There are two main reasons why decentralization may fail to reduce poverty.…”

Group Self‐Interest vs. Equity: Explaining Support for Horizontal Redistribution in (Former) Competitive Clientelist States

“…While co-ethnic districts of Kenya's president received twice as much expenditure on roads and had five times the length of paved roads built in the post-dependence era, for instance, these favors were no longer apparent during periods of democracy (Burgess et al, 2015). Certainly, most African states have diversified the composition of group representation in formal offices in recent decades (François et al, 2015), and newly introduced formal institutional rules increasingly shape possibilities for transactions between patrons and clients (on the role of non-co-ethnic brokers see, for instance, Carlson, 2021; on the shrinking space for local patronage in Kenya see Harris & Posner, 2019, 2022. Other scholars, such as Kendhammer (2015), nonetheless argue that the introduction of power-sharing institutions in contexts of neopatrimonialism has entrenched the centrality of identity-based networks and provides "formal cover for rent-seeking demands on state resources" (p. 144) by defining state access in terms of ethno-regional identities (see also Wanyama & McCord, 2017).…”