Using political settlements analysis to explain poverty trends in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania

Abstract

• This article is the first of its kind to apply political settlements analysis explicitly to trends in the data on poverty reduction. • The article is a comparative case study of Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania. • Predictions of political settlements theory about the relationship between political settlement type and actual poverty reduction are reasonably well supported. • For our survey period ‘broad-concentrated’ Rwanda performs best and ‘narrow-dispersed’ Ethiopia worst, with Malawi and Tanzania in the middle. • Correlations are supported by qualitative analysis that traces the links between political settlement type and the effectiveness of poverty programmes. This article uses political settlements analysis to help illuminate trends in poverty reduction in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania. Drawing on data from the ESID Political Settlements Dataset and our own coding, it finds that the predictions of political settlements theory about the relationship between political settlement type and actual poverty reduction are reasonably well supported by the data, with ‘broad-concentrated’ Rwanda performing best and ‘narrow-dispersed’ Ethiopia worst for the period in question. It then supplements this finding with a largely qualitative analytical narrative, illustrating some of the ways in which political settlement type impacted on poverty reduction through the causal mechanisms of elite commitment and state capability. Although our typology does not explain all of the observed phenomena, we argue that, when supplemented by other variables such as ideology, it is a promising explanatory model.