Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies

Resnick, Danielle

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139568265

Cited by 87 publications

(67 citation statements)

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“…Recent scholarship on electoral outcomes and voter behavior in Africa has emphasized the importance of elite coalitions (Arriola 2012), ethnic identities (Posner 2005; Ferree 2010), party strategies (Resnick 2013), historical legacies (Riedl 2014), patronage transfers (Jablonski 2014), and service delivery (Harding 2015). As anti-poverty programs – including agricultural initiatives – become increasingly common across the continent, our results suggest that they may help to explain patterns of party affiliation and vote choice, particularly where traditional patterns of partisan affiliation related to ethnic or regional identities weaken.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi

Dionne

Horowitz

2016

World Development

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Across sub-Saharan Africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty, increasing agricultural production, and reducing food insecurity. Despite a large literature examining subsidies' effects on output and welfare, little is known about their political effects. This paper examines Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme, one of the largest and most expensive programs implemented, which was launched by the government in 2005. We examine whether the incumbent party, the Democratic Progressive Party headed by president Bingu wa Mutharika, benefited from Malawi's subsidy program by examining a longitudinal dataset of 1,846 rural Malawians interviewed in 2008 and again in 2010. The individual-level data show no evidence that the subsidy program was targeted to Mutharika's co-ethnics or co-partisans. Our analysis further demonstrates that the subsidy program increased support for the incumbent party. These results suggest that even when parties are unable or unwilling to target distributional programs at the local level, they may nonetheless derive political benefits. As anti-poverty programs – including agricultural subsidies to small-scale farmers – become increasingly common across the continent, our results suggest that they may help to explain patterns of party affiliation and vote choice, particularly where traditional patterns of partisan affiliation related to ethnic or regional identities weaken.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi

Dionne

Horowitz

2016

World Development

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“…11 In the long run, however, increasing urban diversity may erode ethnic clientelism. In Africa, urban voters are increasingly drawn to populist candidates who rely on cross-ethnic campaigns (Koter, 2013;Resnick, 2013). If politicians rely less on ethnicity in their search for support, there is a need to understand the strategies that may replace ethnic mobilization in urban areas.…”

Section: B State Responses To the Informal Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

State, Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

et al. 2018

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Contemporary urbanization in the Global South merits greater attention from scholars of comparative politics. Governance, associational life, and political behavior take on distinctive forms in the social and institutional environments created by rapid urbanization, particularly within informal settlements and informal labor markets. In this special issue, we examine forms of collective action and claims-making in these spaces. We also consider how the state assesses, maps, and responds to the demands of informal sector actors. Tackling questions of citizen and state behavior in these informal urban contexts requires innovative research strategies due to data scarcity and social and institutional complexity. Contributors to this symposium explicate novel strategies for addressing these challenges, including the use of informal archives, worksite-based sampling, ethnographic survey design, enforcement process-tracing, and crowd-sourced data.Acknowledgments:

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“…A growing literature on African elections is concerned with the lack of political competition in rural areas. Local clientelistic networks, which provide ample opportunities for voter monitoring and strong social control, have enabled systems of local one-party dominance in many African multiparty states (Koter, 2013a;Resnick, 2014). To account for the level of urbanization, I utilize the World Bank data on the share of the population living in urban areas.…”

Section: Independent Variables Measurement and Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers

Wahman

2015

Party Politics

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The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their access to state resources, have been successful in creating nationwide operations, even in countries where geographical factors have been unfavorable and where ethnic fractionalization is high. The analysis utilizes a new data set of disaggregate election results for 26 African countries to calculate nationalization scores for 77 parties and study the correlates of party nationalization. The results show that factors like ethnic fractionalization, the size of the geographical area, and urbanization affect party nationalization, but only in the case of opposition parties. Incumbent parties, on the other hand, generally remain nationalized despite unfavorable structural conditions.

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Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies

Cited by 87 publications

References 0 publications

The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi

The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi

State, Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers

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