Much research has established that economic development in Africa is a political problem: governments choose policies that benefit a few constituents rather than many. While research shows how national politics affect economic development, systematic research exploring how local politics affects economic development remains scanty. This study fills that gap by examining "development politics" in Kenya: how the linkage between voters and local politicians leads to more (or less) effective local economic development strategies.
This project accesses the local political landscape by focusing on parliamentary constituencies in Kenya. Over the past 15 years, the Kenyan central government has ceded resources and decision-making authority to lower levels of government. This process of "decentralization" has endowed members of parliament (MPs) with development funding to spend within their constituencies. While the funds appeared to be a boon for incumbent MPs, the 2007 elections proved that perception inaccurate. Many MPs with productive and transparent records of fund usage lost their seats, while others with less savory records won handily. By focusing on how MPs allocate development funds, and how constituents punish or reward their MP at the polls, the project traces how local political incentives may lead to poor development choices.
To address these questions, this research traces both who benefits from the allocation of funds, as well as the quality of the projects implemented. This second focus-project quality-features centrally in the research. Politicians face many incentives to implement inefficient or poor-quality projects. For instance, such "white elephant" projects may create employment to constituents or revenue for local contractors, while doing little to improve public welfare in general. The research develops a flexible, low-cost approach to measuring project quality. By eliciting the opinions of construction and engineering experts, the method produces reliable estimates of the distribution of likely project costs, which are then compared with actual project costs. Using such data, the research will reveal the political conditions that make poor-quality projects a good political strategy.
Both policy-makers and civil society organizations will benefit from the study of development politics. For policy makers, this research will indicate the kinds of political and administrative reforms may improve public welfare. In addition, the new method of project evaluation will drastically reduce the costs of monitoring the performance of elected officials. The new method of project evaluation developed for this research will benefit communities and civil society organizations by enabling them to effectively judge whether or not elected officials are delivering high or low quality development. With better information on politician performance, communities can judge more accurately which incumbents should (or should not) be returned to elected office.
