Who Benefits? How Local Ethnic Demography Shapes Political Favoritism in Africa

Abstract

Empirical studies show that many governments gear the provision of goods and services towards their ethnic peers. This article investigates governments’ strategies to provide ethnic favors in Africa. Recent studies of ethnic favoritism find that presidents' ethnic peers and home regions enjoy advantages, yet cannot disentangle whether goods are provided to entire regions or co-ethnic individuals. This article argues that local ethnic demography determines whether governments provide non-excludable public goods or more narrowly targeted handouts. Where government co-ethnics are in the majority, public goods benefit all locals regardless of their ethnic identity. Outside of these strongholds, incumbents pursue discriminatory strategies and only their co-ethnics gain from favoritism. Using fine-grained geographic data on ethnic demographics, the study finds support for the argument's implications in the local incidence of infant mortality. These findings have important implications for theories of distributive politics and conflict in multi-ethnic societies.

Does development aid reach politically excluded groups? A Disaggregated Study of the Location of Aid in Sub‐Saharan Africa

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Detecting and Managing Childhood Onset Hypertension in Africa: A Call to Action

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The role of secondary school teachers in shaping a political culture of ethnicity and ethnic favouritism: the case of Kenya

“…1.The disproportionate distribution of public goods provision to the home region of the president in power and/or to regions where the president's ethnic group is demographically dominant also benefits non co-ethnics living in that region. In regions where co-ethnics are in the minority, research shows that politicians provide more individually targeted benefits instead of non-excludable public goods (Beiser-McGrath et al 2021). …”

“…Ethnicity remains an important factor in shaping politics and everyday life on the African continent, not in the least in the context of Kenya (e.g. Ahlerup & Isaksson 2015; De Luca et al 2018; Harris & Posner 2019; Lonsdale 2019; Beiser-McGrath et al , 2021). Research shows that voting patterns in Kenya largely hew to ethnic lines (Bratton & Kimenyi 2008), that rent in Nairobi's Kibera slums varies by tenants’ background compared with that of the local chief (Marx et al 2019), and that public investment, for example in road construction (Burgess et al 2015) and educational infrastructure (Kramon & Posner 2016; Li 2018), as well as project aid and local funds (Briggs 2014) have often been disproportionally allocated to the home region of the president in power as well as to regions where the president's ethnic group was demographically dominant 1 .…”