Political Finance in Africa: What We Know and What We Don’t.

• In Event: Campaign Finance in Developing Democracies

Abstract

A large body of work on elections and clientelism documents a growing array of election campaign activities in African countries, many of which require vast sums of money. Despite increasing sophistication in studies of electoral mobilization, there is little systematic knowledge about how candidates and parties raise campaign funds and what, if any, constraints they face in doing so. This paper draws on existing case work and cross-national data to take stock of political financing practices and regulations in African countries. In addition to providing descriptive analysis of the political spending and fundraising landscape across the continent, the paper highlights rapidly accelerating costs of political competition, structural challenges in political fundraising, and a highly permissive, yet varied, regulatory landscape in which campaign finance laws are largely endogenous to the fundraising practices of political elites. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda to better understand the causes and consequences of these political financing trends, and their implications for the stability and advancement of democracy in Africa.

Author

• Rachel Sigman, Naval Postgraduate School