Electoral competition can have a significant influence on government decisions regarding public spending. In this paper I examine whether the move to multiparty elections in many African countries in the last ten years has been associated with a clear change in priorities for public spending on education. In particular, I argue that the need to obtain an electoral majority may have prompted governments to devote greater resources to primary schools. I test this hypothesis using panel data on electoral competition and education spending in thirty-five African countries over the period 1980-1999. The results strongly support the hypothesis and are robust to controls for both unobserved country effects and other determinants of spending.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Public Economics with number
0409006.
Length: 26 pages Date of creation: 08 Sep 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0409006
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