Targeting hunger or votes? The political economy of humanitarian transfers in Malawi

Jan Duchoslav, Edwin Kenamu and Jack Thunde

World Development, 2023, vol. 165, issue C

Abstract: Do electoral considerations play a role in the targeting of humanitarian transfers? We analyze the targeting of direct cash and food transfers distributed in Malawi in response to an exceptionally poor harvest following a late and erratic rainy season of 2015/16. Combining household survey data on transfers with a remotely sensed measure of drought and with the results of the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections, we show that transfers were disproportionately targeted at marginal constituencies. Rather than distributing the transfers based solely on need or mobilizing its tribal base, the government attempted to persuade swing voters to support its candidates in the next elections. We find no evidence that this strategy was successful at increasing the vote of ruling party candidates in subsequent elections.

Keywords: Political economy; Direct transfers; Disaster relief; Malawi; Voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22003692
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Targeting hunger or votes? The political economy of humanitarian transfers in Malawi (2022)
Working Paper: Targeting Hunger or Votes? The Political Economy of Humanitarian Transfers in Malawi (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:165:y:2023:i:c:s0305750x22003692

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106179

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().