IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2016-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa?: How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz

Abstract

Does economic standing cross-cut ethnicity in African electoral politics? In many countries in the region, ethnicity appears to be a major consideration in individuals' political decision-making. However, there is significant variation in the extent to which coethnics support parties en bloc; while some ethnic groups exhibit high rates of similarity in terms of members' preferred parties, others are more fractionalized. One factor that might affect the probability that an individual will support the plurality-choice party of his or her ethnic group is relative economic standing.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, 2016. "Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa?: How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2016-104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2016-104.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mozaffar, Shaheen & Scarritt, James R. & Galaich, Glen, 2003. "Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages, and Party Systems in Africa's Emerging Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(3), pages 379-390, August.
    2. Conroy-Krutz, Jeffrey, 2013. "Information and Ethnic Politics in Africa," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 345-373, April.
    3. Michelitch, Kristin, 2015. "Does Electoral Competition Exacerbate Interethnic or Interpartisan Economic Discrimination? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Market Price Bargaining," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 43-61, February.
    4. John D. Huber, 2012. "Measuring Ethnic Voting: Do Proportional Electoral Laws Politicize Ethnicity?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 986-1001, October.
    5. Casey, Katherine, 2015. "Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics," Research Papers 3299, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    6. Baldwin, Kate & Huber, John D., 2010. "Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 644-662, November.
    7. Katherine Casey, 2015. "Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2410-2448, August.
    8. Leonard Wantchekon, 2003. "Clientelism and voting behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in benin," Natural Field Experiments 00339, The Field Experiments Website.
    9. Keefer, Philip, 2010. "The ethnicity distraction ? political credibility and partisan preferences in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5236, The World Bank.
    10. David Yanagizawa-Drott, 2014. "Propaganda and Conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(4), pages 1947-1994.
    11. Melson, Robert & Wolpe, Howard, 1970. "Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(4), pages 1112-1130, December.
    12. Keith R. Weghorst & Staffan I. Lindberg, 2013. "What Drives the Swing Voter in Africa?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 717-734, July.
    13. Shugart,Matthew Soberg & Carey,John M., 1992. "Presidents and Assemblies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521429900, September.
    14. Shugart,Matthew Soberg & Carey,John M., 1992. "Presidents and Assemblies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521419628, September.
    15. Ichino, Nahomi & Nathan, Noah L., 2013. "Crossing the Line: Local Ethnic Geography and Voting in Ghana," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(2), pages 344-361, May.
    16. Riker, William H., 1982. "The Two-party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 753-766, December.
    17. Posner, Daniel N., 2004. "The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(4), pages 529-545, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, 2016. "Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa? How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics," WIDER Working Paper Series 104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Samuel Adams & Kingsley S. Agomor, 2015. "Democratic politics and voting behaviour in Ghana," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 365-381, December.
    3. Richard Bluhm & Roland Hodler & Paul Schaudt, 2021. "Ethnofederalism and Ethnic Voting," CESifo Working Paper Series 9314, CESifo.
    4. Dreher, Axel & Fuchs, Andreas & Hodler, Roland & Parks, Bradley C. & Raschky, Paul A. & Tierney, Michael J., 2019. "African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 44-71.
    5. Kao, Kristen & Lust, Ellen & Rakner, Lise, 2022. "Vote-buying, anti-corruption campaigns, and identity in African elections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    6. Grácio, Matilde & Vicente, Pedro C., 2021. "Information, get-out-the-vote messages, and peer influence: Causal effects on political behavior in Mozambique," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    7. Jeremy Bowles & Horacio Larreguy & Shelley Liu, 2020. "How Weakly Institutionalized Parties Monitor Brokers in Developing Democracies: Evidence from Postconflict Liberia," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 952-967, October.
    8. Zack Zimbalist & Jorge Antonio Asprón Ramírez, 2024. "Teaching and researching International Development: Amplifying voices from the Global South," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(1), pages 127-145, January.
    9. Kyle L. Marquardt & Yoshiko M. Herrera, 2015. "Ethnicity as a Variable: An Assessment of Measures and Data Sets of Ethnicity and Related Identities," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(3), pages 689-716, September.
    10. Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero & Adrienne LeBas, 2020. "Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(1), pages 77-92, January.
    11. Carl Müller-Crepon, 2022. "Local ethno-political polarization and election violence in majoritarian vs. proportional systems," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(2), pages 242-258, March.
    12. Arcangelo Dimico, 2017. "Size Matters: The Effect of the Size of Ethnic Groups on Development," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(3), pages 291-318, June.
    13. Elisa Mougin, 2021. "Three essays in the political economy of information [Trois essais en économie politique de l’information]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03537938, HAL.
    14. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie, 2010. "Political participation in Africa: Participatory inequalities and the role of resources," Working Papers in Economics 462, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2010.
    15. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Bigsten, Arne, 2014. "Clientelism and ethnic divisions," Working Papers in Economics 598, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    16. Bose, Paul, 2021. "Political (self-)selection and competition: Evidence from U.S. Congressional elections," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242377, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Elisa Mougin, 2021. "Three essays in the political economy of information [Trois essais en économie politique de l’information]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03537938, HAL.
    18. Baldwin, Kate & Karlan, Dean & Udry, Christopher & Appiah, Ernest, 2023. "How political insiders lose out when international aid underperforms: Evidence from a participatory development experiment in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    19. Josep Colomer, 2014. "Equilibrium institutions: the federal-proportional trade-off," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 559-576, March.
    20. Buisseret, Peter, 2017. "Electoral competition with entry under non-majoritarian run-off rules," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 494-506.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Equality and inequality; Voting;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2016-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.