Paying to Play: How Parliamentary Candidates Fund Ruling Party Campaigns in Malawi

What are the sources of incumbent parties’ superior financial resources in parliamentary election campaigns in Africa’s clientelistic democracies? Scholars have emphasized ruling parties’ access to state resources. We document a different mechanism, where government parties attract candidates willing and able to devote their personal resources to parliamentary (and by extension presidential) campaigns in the hope of gaining access to central resources. We support our theory with data from an original survey of candidates in the 2019 Malawi parliamentary election. Our findings show that government party candidates receive more resources from their party. More importantly, government party candidates also spend more of their own money in campaigns. The findings have implications for political competition and representation in Africa and beyond.