Social Science Research Council

"Incumbent Insecurity and the Politics of Entitlement Protection in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe"

My IDRF funded research looks at the political economy of anti-famine policies in four countries in Africa (Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe). Taking as its point of departure the established literature on the effective and sustainable forms of response to the threat of famine, the project seeks to explain why some governments choose entitlement policies that are heavily reliant on wage-based protections (the viable and sustainable strategy) while other, similarly placed governments opt for the unconditional direct delivery of food (the less effective and unsustainable policy). I answer the above question through: 1) detailed comparative cross-country case studies of the politics of anti-famine policy choice in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe; and 2) temporally sensitive within-case analyses of the adoption of anti-famine policies in Botswana and Zimbabwe. My hypothesis is that the variation in the form of entitlements across countries and within a single country over time is explained by the level of incumbent insecurity. The argument posed is that the more secure incumbents become, the more likely they are to adopt the economically sustainable response of work-based protection, whereas insecure incumbents are more likely to discount the future and opt for the quick, though unsustainable and ultimately wasteful, gains from unconditional food aid. In this regard, this dissertation stresses the need for serious consideration of the micro-level political concerns of central government officials in explaining policy choice.