Political accountability and development in Africa's resource economies

• Analyzes the impact of natural resources and political regimes on development. • Democracy is more important than resources in predicting development outcomes. • Resource-rich democracies have had either competitive elections or strong parties. • Accountability is enhanced by combining competitiveness with strong parties. Sub-Saharan Africa has undergone a profound political transformation since the early 1990s. A partial wave of democratization – affecting countries rich in mineral and fuel resources as well as their resource-poor counterparts – gave rise to a variety of political regime configurations. This article explores the joint consequences of natural resources and political regimes for development outcomes. We analyze cross-national data on the social inclusiveness and economic sustainability of development from the early 1990s through the late 2010s. Using regression-based simulations, we show that electoral democracy is associated with better development outcomes irrespective of natural resources. Where resource-rich nondemocracies have performed poorly, the problem lies more in their dearth of democracy than in their wealth of resources. We also show that democracy's advantages operate through mechanisms of political accountability: electoral competitiveness and programmatic (as opposed to clientelistic) parties. Africa's resource-rich democracies have exhibited one mechanism or the other but not both – gravitating toward either competitive clientelism or programmatic dominant parties. We illustrate the challenges of combining electoral competitiveness with programmatic parties using the examples of Namibia, Ghana, and Zambia.