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Title
The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi. |
Full text
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t3168b3 |
Date
2016 |
Author(s)
Dionne, Kim Yi; Horowitz, Jeremy |
Abstract
Across sub-Saharan Africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty, increasing agricultural production, and reducing food insecurity. Despite a large literature examining subsidies' effects on output and welfare, little is known about their political effects. This paper examines Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme, one of the largest and most expensive programs implemented, which was launched by the government in 2005. We examine whether the incumbent party, the Democratic Progressive Party headed by president Bingu wa Mutharika, benefited from Malawi's subsidy program by examining a longitudinal dataset of 1,846 rural Malawians interviewed in 2008 and again in 2010. The individual-level data show no evidence that the subsidy program was targeted to Mutharika's co-ethnics or co-partisans. Our analysis further demonstrates that the subsidy program increased support for the incumbent party. These results suggest that even when parties are unable or unwilling to target distributional programs at the local level, they may nonetheless derive political benefits. As anti-poverty programs - including agricultural subsidies to small-scale farmers - become increasingly common across the continent, our results suggest that they may help to explain patterns of party affiliation and vote choice, particularly where traditional patterns of partisan affiliation related to ethnic or regional identities weaken. |
Subject(s)
Zero Hunger; fertilizer subsidy; Malawi; Africa; political behavior; distributional politics; Economics; Studies in Human Society; Development Studies |
Publisher
eScholarship, University of California |
Type of publication
article |
Format
application/pdf |
Rights
public |
Identifier
qt8t3168b3 |
Repository
Berkeley - University of California
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Added to C-A: 2023-09-11;08:52:48 |
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