Agents of the Regime? Traditional Leaders and Electoral Politics in South Africa

Abstract

Traditional leaders are often given subnational authority in developing democracies. Although ubiquitous, the electoral consequences of their power have received little attention, often due to empirical challenges. We argue that traditional leaders, whose power and resources largely depend on the state, have incentives to support incumbent political parties who can guarantee their survival and provide them with rents. We study this quid pro quo in the former Bantustans of South Africa, showing that an alignment between the incumbent African National Congress and chiefs maps to increased electoral support for the party. Our results suggest that chiefs boost African National Congress vote share by between 6.6 and 8.2 percentage points in the Bantustans, translating into a change in the national vote of between 2 and 2.5 percentage points. Our empirical strategy rules out that our results are driven by differences in ethnicity, race, or economic circumstances, which commonly confound the presence of traditional authorities.