Local Electoral Cycles and Distributive Politics: Evidence from Kenya

• In Event: Distributive Politics and Access to Public Goods

Abstract

How do distributive politics change across an electoral cycle? This paper examines how local Members of Parliament in Kenya adjust their distributive strategies across an election cycle. A robust literature examines how politicians in the developing world allocate state resources for their political benefit. Similarly, work on political business cycles manipulate policy before an election in hopes of influencing the outcome. Our work bridges these literatures, focusing on how a politician's distributive strategies change depending on two key elements of the polititical environment. First, we explore how proximity to a future election affects the frequency, size, and location of projects implemented. Second, we examine how a politician's access to resources through the ruling coalition affects how she uses her discretionary development budget. Halfway through the study period, a constitutional referendum reshaped the ruling coalition, bringing new politicians into government and sending others to the back bench. This realignment changed politicians' access to central government resources, thus affecting the strategic use of unrelated discretionary development funds. To study these questions, we leverage spatial and temporal variation in the placement of development projects implemented as part of Kenya's Constituencies Development Fund. The data contain over 30,000 development projects implemented in Kenya from 2003 to 2007 by Members of Parliament in their constituencies. In this way, our paper follows the temporal changes in distributive strategies across over 200 different electoral units in Kenya.

Authors

• J. Andrew Harris, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Daniel N. Posner, University of California, Los Angeles