This paper empirically examines whether Africa’s low corruption agenda can be achieved amid election cycles. We employ country-level data from 36 African countries covering the period 1998–2020. Using fixed effects, random effects and dynamic panel data regressions, our results suggest that in election years, increment in government expenditure is associated with higher corruption perception while increment in real GDP growth lowers corruption perception than in non-election years. On regional differences, the effect of election cycles on corruption perception was found to be greater in southern part of Africa than the rest of the sub-regions. These findings may have important implications for policy.

本文实证检验了非洲的低腐败议程是否可以在选举周期中实现。我们使用了 1998 年至 2020 年期间来自 36 个非洲国家的国家级数据。使用固定效应、随机效应和动态面板数据回归，我们的结果表明，在选举年，政府支出的增加与更高的腐败感知相关，而实际 GDP 增长的增加比非选举年降低了腐败感知。在区域差异方面，选举周期对腐败认知的影响在非洲南部比其他次区域更大。这些发现可能对政策有重要影响。