Do China’s Belt and Road Initiative Projects Boost Incumbent Electoral Success? An Examination of Electoral Effects in Three African Countries Öffentlichkeit

Moran, Gabriel (Spring 2020)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/rx913q85v?locale=de
Published

Abstract

Why do the leaders of developing countries choose to participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Despite widespread concerns over the potential Chinese coercion of developing countries through “debt-trap diplomacy,” developing countries across the globe still enthusiastically pursue BRI financing. This paper evaluates the claim that BRI projects increase the electoral support of incumbent national leaders in recipient countries. Using fixed-effects multivariate regression, this paper utilizes electoral district returns from presidential elections in Kenya, Nigeria, and Seychelles before and after receiving BRI investment. Additional robustness tests were conducted to control for capital bias and country slope differences. Our research finds that BRI and World Bank aid projects have no statistically significant effect on subnational election returns for incumbent African leaders.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………..….1

Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………….………....6

Theory……………………………………………………………………………………………………….11

Data and Methods………………………………………………………………………………………..13

Table 1…………………………………………………………………………………………………..….15

Results………………………………………………………………………………………………………25

Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………………….…28

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………...32

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………....34

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………...40

About this Honors Thesis

Rights statement
  • Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.
School
Department
Degree
Submission
Language
  • English
Research Field
Stichwort
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor
Committee Members
Zuletzt geändert

Primary PDF

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Actions
Do China’s Belt and Road Initiative Projects Boost Incumbent Electoral Success? An Examination of Electoral Effects in Three African Countries () 2020-04-25 12:36:28 -0400

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Actions
BRI and WB Project Dataset (Project Data) 2020-04-14 12:06:01 -0400
R Dataset (Model Dataset) 2020-04-14 12:06:05 -0400
R Code (R Coding with explanation of procedure) 2020-04-25 12:36:33 -0400