8 - Leading for Development? (II)

Summary

Chapters 8 complements Chapter 7 by assessing the developmental implications of leadership changes in Africa through an extensive empirical analysis. It examines the impact of leaders’ duration in power and of the diverse modes of leadership transfers on the provision of social welfare, state consolidation and control of corruption. It is postulated that electoral competition and alternation in office–  even when they fall short of genuine democracy–  help African citizens improve the accountability of their leaders, at least to some extent. The risk of being removed from power generates incentives to provide public goods for incumbents who want to maximize their reelection chances. At the same time, elections help opposition parties monitor the behavior of rulers and expose wrongdoings and maladministration. We advance several specific hypotheses on the effect that leaders can have on social progress as well as on a better and less corrupt functioning of state apparatuses. We test these hypotheses empirically using a time-series and cross-sectional research design that includes all the 49 countries of the sub-Saharan region between 1960 and 2018. Much of the evidence confirms our underlying argument about African development, political leaders, and the modes in which they rotate in office matter