IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gigawp/45.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ethnicity, Voter Alignment and Political Party Affiliation – an African Case: Zambia

Author

Listed:
  • Erdmann, Gero

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that ethnicity provides the social cleavage for voting behav-iour and party affiliation in Africa. Because this is usually inferred from aggregate data of national election results, it might prove to be an ecological fallacy. The evidence based on individual data from an opinion survey in Zambia suggests that ethnicity matters for voter alignment and even more so for party affiliation, but it is certainly not the only factor. The analysis also points to a number of qualifications which are partly methodology-related. One is that the degree of ethnic voting can differ from one ethno-political group to the other depending on various degrees of ethnic mobilisation. Another is that if smaller eth-nic groups or subgroups do not identify with one particular party, it is difficult to find a significant statistical correlation between party affiliation and ethnicity - but that does not prove that they do not affiliate along ethnic lines.

Suggested Citation

  • Erdmann, Gero, 2007. "Ethnicity, Voter Alignment and Political Party Affiliation – an African Case: Zambia," GIGA Working Papers 45, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47807/1/605335656.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Posner,Daniel N., 2005. "Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521541794, September.
    2. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    3. Hyden, Goran & Leys, Colin, 1972. "Elections and Politics in Single-party Systems: the Case of Kenya and Tanzania," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 389-420, October.
    4. Gero Erdmann, 1999. "Parteien in Afrika. Versuch eines Neuanfangs in der Parteienforschung," Africa Spectrum, Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 34(3), pages 375-393.
    5. Lemarchand, René, 1972. "Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa:* Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 68-90, March.
    6. Barkan, Joel D., 1976. "Comment: Further Reassessment of “Conventional Wisdom:” Political Knowledge and Voting Behavior in Rural Kenya," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(2), pages 452-455, June.
    7. 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.
    8. Posner,Daniel N., 2005. "Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521833981, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erdmann, Gero, 2007. "The Cleavage Model, Ethnicity and Voter Alignment in Africa: Conceptual and Methodological Problems Revisited," GIGA Working Papers 63, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    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. Allison C. White, 2016. "Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(7), pages 1127-1178, August.
    4. Mwangi S. Kimenyi & Roxana Gutierrez Romero, 2008. "Identity, Grievances, and Economic Determinants of Voting in the 2007 Kenyan Elections," Working papers 2008-38, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.

    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. Erdmann, Gero, 2007. "The Cleavage Model, Ethnicity and Voter Alignment in Africa: Conceptual and Methodological Problems Revisited," GIGA Working Papers 63, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    2. Ferree, Karen E. & Gibson, Clark C. & Long, James D., 2021. "Mixed records, complexity, and ethnic voting in African elections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    3. Kaivan Munshi & Mark Rosenzweig, 2008. "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics: Caste, Commitment, and Competence in Indian Local Governments," NBER Working Papers 14335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Johan Brosché & Hanne Fjelde & Kristine Höglund, 2020. "Electoral violence and the legacy of authoritarian rule in Kenya and Zambia," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(1), pages 111-125, January.
    5. Hillman, Arye L. & Metsuyanim, Kfir & Potrafke, Niklas, 2015. "Democracy with group identity," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 274-287.
    6. Rachel Glennerster & Edward Miguel & Alexander D. Rothenberg, 2013. "Collective Action in Diverse Sierra Leone Communities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 285-316, May.
    7. Arnim Langer & Frances Stewart, 2015. "Regional Imbalances, Horizontal Inequalities, and Violent Conflicts," World Bank Publications - Reports 22514, The World Bank Group.
    8. 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.
    9. Dionne, Kim Yi & Horowitz, Jeremy, 2016. "The Political Effects of Agricultural Subsidies in Africa: Evidence from Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 215-226.
    10. Jennifer Cyr, 2016. "The Pitfalls and Promise of Focus Groups as a Data Collection Method," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 45(2), pages 231-259, May.
    11. Denis Cogneau & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps & Gilles Spielvogel, 2010. "Development at the border : a study of national integration in post-colonial West Africa," PSE Working Papers halshs-00966312, HAL.
    12. Anderson, Siwan & Francois, Patrick, 2023. "Reservations and the politics of fear," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    13. Herman Demeze & Issofa Moyouwou & Roland Pongou, 2016. "The Welfare Economics of Tactical Voting in Democracies: A Partial Identification Equilibrium Analysis," Working Papers 1611e, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    14. Kao, Kristen & Lust, Ellen & Rakner, Lise, 2022. "Vote-buying, anti-corruption campaigns, and identity in African elections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    15. Demeze, Herman & Moyouwou, Issofa & Pongou, Roland, 2016. "The Welfare Economics of Tactical Voting in Democracies: A Partial Identification Equilibrium Analysis," MPRA Paper 70607, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The political economy of ethnolinguistic cleavages," Working Papers 2009-17, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    17. Nemera Mamo & Sambit Bhattacharyya, 2018. "Natural Resources and Political Patronage in Africa: An Ethnicity Level Analysis," Working Paper Series 0418, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    18. Sam Barrett, 2015. "Subnational Adaptation Finance Allocation: Comparing Decentralized and Devolved Political Institutions in Kenya," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 118-139, August.
    19. 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.

    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:zbw:gigawp:45. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.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.