Aiding and Abetting: Project Aid and Ethnic Politics in Kenya

Ryan C. Briggs

World Development, 2014, vol. 64, issue C, 194-205

Abstract: I analyze a unique dataset of sub-national resource allocations in Kenya from 1989 to 1995 and show that project aid and local funds were disproportionately directed to the president’s political base. Per-donor analyses of aid flows show that bilateral donors and the African Development Bank were most likely to skew their aid to the president’s base. Kenya’s autocratic leader was able to exercise strong political influence over the location of many aid projects, even under unfavorable circumstances. While disbursing aid as projects may have ensured better accounting of funds, it did little to prevent aid from becoming patronage.

Keywords: foreign aid; distributive politics; ethnic politics; Kenya; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X14001570
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:64:y:2014:i:c:p:194-205

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.05.027

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 ().