SPIRe\u2019s week four seminar will feature SPIRe’s Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh and Dr. Samuel Brazys presenting their paper co-authored with Peter Heaney of Irish Aid on \u201cFrom the Great Lakes to the Great Rift Valley: Does Strategic Economic Policy Explain the 2009 Malawi Election?” from 13:00-14:00 Thursday, \u00a0 October 10th in G317 Newman Building, UCD Belfield.\u00a0 All are welcome.<\/p>\n
Abstract<\/i><\/p>\n
Ethnic voting cleavages have\u00a0featured in a number of sub-Saharan African states\u00a0since\u00a0third wave democratization\u00a0following the end of the Cold War. \u00a0While the causes and consequences of these cleavages are well\u00a0studied, there have been\u00a0surprisingly\u00a0few attempts to\u00a0understand if or how\u00a0strategies of pan-ethnic coalition building based on\u00a0distributiveeconomic\u00a0policies\u00a0could be employed to secure national electoral coalitions. \u00a0In this\u00a0paper we examine if\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a02009 Malawian\u00a0parliamentary elections\u00a0the\u00a0newly-formed national party,the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP),\u00a0led by the\u00a0President\u00a0Bingu\u00a0wa\u00a0Mutharika\u00a0used\u00a0its incumbent position to promote an economy policy based on food security in order toovercome traditional ethnic voting patterns\u00a0and\u00a0win a\u00a0nation-wide\u00a0electoral\u00a0majority.\u00a0\u00a0After presenting a formal model of\u00a0using\u00a0allocated economic policy\u00a0to overcome ethnic bias\u00a0andinduce\u00a0vote-switching we\u00a0use\u00a0district-level data\u00a0in a two-step approach\u00a0to analyze if strategic allocation of national fertilizer subsidy problem contributed to the nation-wide electoral victory of the DPP. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SPIRe\u2019s week four seminar will feature SPIRe’s Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh and Dr. Samuel Brazys presenting their paper co-authored with Peter Heaney of Irish Aid on \u201cFrom the Great Lakes to the Great Rift Valley: Does Strategic Economic Policy Explain … Continue reading