Interrogating Ethnic Stacking: The Uses and Abuses of Security Force Ethnicity in Sudan

Abstract

ABSTRACT African elites commonly recruit co-ethnic soldiers into state security institutions, a practice known as ethnic stacking. Ethnic stacking has recently received considerable attention from scholars and been linked to authoritarian repression, coups, and political violence. This article employs evidence from Sudan to argue that ethnic stacking is not one coherent tactic but several, and can manifest across multiple identities, multiple institutions, and at different points in the security force hierarchy. Moreover, the effects of ethnic stacking can be mediated by which institutions are stacked and whether stacking is restricted to the leadership or encompasses an entire security force.