Local Politics and Social Program Implementation in Kenya

• In Event: Local Politics in Developing Countries: Experiencing and Engaging with the State

Abstract

Social protection programs are rapidly expanding in Africa and elsewhere around the world. In principle, such programs are designed to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth, and there is evidence that programmatic social programs — where the distribution of resources is guided by transparent and formal rules and access to benefits is not contingent on political behavior — can have a positive impact. Yet social programs can also be subject to political manipulation, which can undermine their potential benefits. Indeed, social protection programs can fuel clientelistic distributive politics, where political elites manipulate the programs for political advantage. Given that programmatic and clientelistic social protection programs can produce different welfare and economic consequences, understanding the conditions under which social programs are implemented programmatically versus clientelistically is important. To advance this understanding, this paper investigates the process of social program implementation at the local level in Kenya. A focus on local level politics is critical because a feature of many social programs in Africa is the delegation of significant responsibility, including beneficiary selection, to leaders and organizations at the local level. When will social protection programs be implemented programmatically versus clientelistically at the local level? The paper answers this question with a within-country analysis of social program implementation in Kenya, where Constituency Social Assistance Committees (CSAC) and other location-level (i.e., village-level) committees are involved in the implementation of social programs in the country’s 290 electoral constituencies. The constituency Member of Parliament is the “patron” of the CSAC and plays a role in the selection of its members, while other local leaders have various avenues for influencing the composition and activities of village committees. This structure creates opportunities for the political capture of social programs in a constituency, yet evidence suggests significant variation across constituencies in the extent to which political elites choose to or are able to take advantage of these opportunities. To build and test a theory explaining this variation, the paper presents results from an original survey of local government bureaucrats and CSAC committee members in 108 constituencies in Kenya, along with detailed qualitative evidence on local politics and social program implementation in a smaller subset of constituencies. The results advance the literature on social protection in low-income settings, as well as the literature seeking to explain the emergence of programmatic distributive politics in contexts with widespread clientelism.

Author

• Eric J. Kramon, George Washington University