Do institutions constrain presidential power in Africa? Conventional wisdom holds that personalist rule grants African presidents unchecked powers. Consequently, very little research exists on African institutions and their impact on executive authority. In this paper, I use original data on the...

Existing research finds significant partisan differences in public opinion on the causes of poverty, deservingness of government assistance, and support for government spending on social protection. However, much of the evidence comes from middle-to-high-income countries with established social...

Why does clientelism persist? What determines how politicians signal responsiveness or fulfil their campaign promises? Existing works assume that politicians choose the most successful means of winning votes-either through targeted patronage/clientelism or programmatic policies. However, the...