The Politics of Government Expenditures in Tanzania: 1999-2007

What allocation strategy do hegemonic party regimes use in order to increase their level of electoral support? Although the literature has established that targeting resources to marginally supportive districts is the most effective distributive strategy for competitive democracies, it is not possible to make a clear prediction about the best strategy for hegemonic party regimes due to the lack of committed partisan preferences and competitive opposition parties. This paper seeks to address this puzzle by examining the patterns by which expenditures were distributed by the Tanzanian ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), across the country’s 108 mainland districts from 1999 through 2007. The analysis also includes an examination of the expenditures patterns over time within the same district. Overall, this study finds that CCM targeted expenditures toward those districts that elected the party with the highest margin of victory. However, rather than attributing this outcome to the “patronage hypothesis,” the patterns of expenditures over time reveal that CCM punished those districts that reduced support for the ruling party despite maintaining a high margin of victory. These findings suggest that CCM pursued a long-term allocation strategy with the goal of increasing future electoral margins by punishing even slight defection with a decrease in resources. 1 Paper presented at WGAPE, Pomona College, April 30-May 1, 2010