The political economy of the food subsidy system in Bangladesh

Richard Adams ()

Journal of Development Studies, 1998, vol. 35, issue 1, 66-88

Abstract: This article examines the operation of the food subsidy system in Bangladesh from 1980 to 1995 using a political economy perspective. Two political economy concepts - rent-seeking lobbies and rent-seeking bureaucrats/agents - are found to be useful in providing a partial explanation of why this system has failed to benefit the rural poor. However, each of these explanations is incomplete because it fails to consider the large impact that external actors - USAID and the World Bank - have had on the Bangladesh food subsidy system. One way to improve the ability of this system to reach the poor would be to increase the amount of self-targeting in food subsidies by building on the Food-for- Work programme.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220389808422555 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jdevst:v:35:y:1998:i:1:p:66-88

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220389808422555

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().