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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Electrifying the base? Aid and incumbent advantage in Ghana
Author:Briggs, Ryan C.
Year:2012
Periodical:Journal of Modern African Studies (ISSN 0022-278X)
Volume:50
Issue:4
Pages:603-624
Language:English
Geographic term:Ghana
Subjects:development cooperation
electricity
elections
2000
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/41653735
Abstract:In 1999, the year before Ghana's 2000 election, the country experienced a large, unexpected decline in aid. The incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) lost the election. Did the decline in aid hurt the NDC at the polls, or was it simply incidental? Using data from a national, World Bank-funded electrification project, this article shows that the NDC was able to allocate aid according to explicitly political criteria. The article also exploits a quasi-experiment in aid disbursements to show that electrification caused NDC voting to increase in the constituencies that received electrification. Pre-electoral aid fluctuations exert a modest but measurable force on voting patterns. These findings add weight to calls for donors to coordinate to reduce aid volatility. They also show that incumbent governments can allocate aid strategically to secure votes, even under the best-case scenario of strict donor monitoring in an established democracy. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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