The political costs of hunger: Food insecurity and democratic Backsliding in Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Development, Redistribution and Policy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Amartya Sen famously asserted, “No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy,” (Sen, 1996:16) highlighting the importance of political, over climatic or agricultural, factors in food security. He argued that the Bengal’s 1943 famine, did not result from a decline in food availability but rather was caused by conflict-driven inflation and rising commodity prices exacerbated by the non-democratic nature of the India regime. Several studies have empirically tested the association between democracy and food security in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and found support for Sen’s proposition that accountability to a vocal and voting public creates incentives for politicians to ensure freedom from hunger through redistributive efforts and adequate planning.

In this paper, we advance previous work by exploring a reverse provenance of Sen’s hypothesis: asking whether weakened food security contributes to the erosion of democracy in contemporary Sub-Saharan African (SSA), a process termed ‘democratic backsliding’ (Waldner and Lust, 2018). SSA countries have experienced multiple waves of democratization, yet the growing frequency of shocks—from extreme weather and price volatility to conflict and global pandemics— continues to worsen their food security situation, challenging the assertions that democratic regimes are necessarily immune to famine. We argue that major shocks can undermine both the real and perceived effectiveness of redistributive policies, prompting governments to prioritize highly visible short-term entitlements over long-term structural investments in food security. This shift in focus may exacerbate political polarization and contribute to growing public disaffection with democratic regimes, leading to political disengagement, which in turn creates incentives for regimes to consolidate power and slide further toward autocratic rule.

Our empirical analysis leverages both country-level and individual survey datasets. At the country level, we assess the correlation between national indicators of the quality of democratic institutions (specifically competitive elections) from the V-Dem Institute (Coppedge et al., 2020) and measures of food security from FAOSTAT. We also expand previous empirical analyses by using sub-national Afrobarometer survey data to explore the relationship between individual-level reports of hunger and the perceptions of and preferences for democracy.

Findings demonstrate possible qualifications to Sen’s hypothesis in SSA. Cross-national regression analyses indicate that deteriorating food security manifests in less competitive elections and less egalitarian societies. At the individual level, we find that improving food security is associated with greater support for democracy. Altogether, we find that deterioration in food security correlates with decay in the quality of institutional governance and weaker support for democracy among the public. Collectively, failure to address food insecurity may carry substantial political costs, contributing to democratic backsliding, which in turn may further undermine food security, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

Author

• Didier Yelognisse Alia, University of Washington
  Presenting Author