Political Financing, Election Campaign Spending & Democratic Stability in Africa

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the past several decades, political campaigns in Africa have become increasingly expensive. From hiring international consultants to using helicopters for campaign rallies to distributing money widely to voters, candidates and parties across African countries require an increasingly large volume of money and resources to compete seriously in elections. Although there have been major advancements in understanding the political strategies and campaign activities of both incumbent and opposition actors – and the types of resources they require – there remain major gaps in knowledge about how, and with what consequences, candidates and parties raise money for their political operations.

This panel explores major questions and themes surrounding political financing in Africa and beyond. When and why do political finance regulations vary? To what extent do resource asymmetries exist between incumbent and opposition parties? How do the sources of political money affect the stability of democratic regimes and the quality of democratic governance? In addressing these questions, the panel seeks to center critical questions surrounding money and resources in the study of elections and democracy.

The panel starts with a survey of “what we know” about political financing in Africa (Sigman) including the legal landscape(s), campaign costs, and the sources of funding for election campaigns across African countries. Bob-Milliar zooms in to Ghana to explore the highly unsustainable way in which politicians use state offices to finance their political campaigns. The papers by Kerr and Wahman/Seeberg examine resource asymmetries among parliamentary candidates in Nigeria and Malawi respectively, and their implications for democratic advancement and stability. The panel brings a diversity of research methods – cross national statistical analysis (Sigman), qualitative inquiry using archival and interview data (Bob-Milliar), and surveys of political candidates (Kerr and Wahman/Seeberg) – into dialogue with each other to help chart future paths for research on political money in Africa.

Sub Unit

• Division 53: African Politics

Individual Presentations

• Political Finance in Africa: What We Know and What We Don’t - Rachel Sigman, Naval Postgraduate School

• Auctioning Public Offices - George Meyiri Bob-Milliar, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

• Asymmetries in Campaign Spending and Electability of Parliamentary Candidates - Nicholas Kerr, University of Florida

• Ruling Party Advantages from the Top-down or the Bottom-up: Evidence from Malawi - Michael Wahman, Michigan State University; Merete Bech Seeberg, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Discussant

• Shana S Warren Innovations for Poverty Action