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A State of Change

Many developing countries have recently increased the number of their sub-national administrative units. Existing literature explains this phenomenon by suggesting that because new units serve as patronage to an area, they can help a leader meet local demand for state resources or divide opposition elites. These explanations, however, overlook the costs of new administrative units to a leader facing competitive reelection, in part, because they rely largely on evidence from non-competitive electoral systems. I posit that leaders facing competitive reelection create new units selectively, limiting the supply to electorally valuable areas where residents of the split unit can best be swayed to vote for the leader in the upcoming election. I find evidence of these claims using a unique dataset of administrative district creation alongside archival evidence from Kenya during the country’s first decade after the return to multi-party elections. This article illuminates the political factors driving decentralization across developing countries that have transitioned to holding multi-party elections.