Convened by Guido Maschhaupt, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Hangala Siachiwena, University of Cape Town

Across Africa, the promise of democracy has often been linked to a "democratic dividend"—the expectation that elected governments will be more accountable, responsive, and attentive to the needs of their citizens, and in turn drive economic prosperity.  However, historical evidence shows that this causal link is at best conditional, and much of the literature emphasizes democratic failings, such as executive overreach, election tampering, and clientelism. In the context of global autocratisation, there is a need to move beyond the study of democracy that measures its absence or presence, and towards a more context-specific, empirically-rooted understanding of how such a dividend can arise in the Global South, and in which forms. 

This panel examines how democratic processes —including, but not only, elections and local accountability mechanisms — shape developmental outcomes such as the policy responsiveness of elected officials, and resource allocation. As recent studies on Ghana (Ofosu, 2024) and Malawi (Fisher, 2025) demonstrate, caricatures of corruption fail to recognize that elected politicians face significant structural challenges, and often balance private, ethnic, and community interests. What constitutes a “democratic dividend” in such contexts is thus likely to differ from common understandings. Cheeseman et al. (2021) argue, for instance, that some forms of patrimonial politics can actually generate democratic benefits, such as increasing voter turnout, while Farrell (2025) argues that distributary ‘clientelist’ practices allow politicians to display their virtuous capacity. Politicians may also use government resources like Constituency Development Funds (Opalo, 2020), or Agricultural Input Subsidies (Maschhaupt, forthcoming) to build relations with their constituents. 

We invite papers that interrogate whether and which politicians’ actions enhance democratic accountability; whether they empower citizens or create dependency; and how these dynamics vary across contexts. Contributions from diverse disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches are welcome, particularly those that offer empirically rich and theoretically grounded insights.