Opposition Bargaining across Ethnic Cleavages

Abstract

No one on the basis of his own tribe will be able to be elected head of state…. Those who think that they will use only their tribes are mistaken. Omar Bongo, president of Gabon, 1993 This chapter examines how the private resources of the business community can influence the process as well as the outcome of coalition bargaining among opposition politicians from different ethnic groups. Previous chapters have shown that African entrepreneurs had sufficient cause to oppose entrenched incumbents who had mismanaged their countries’ economies for decades. But it was only in countries where cash-strapped leaders were obliged to adopt financial reforms that entrepreneurs were subsequently able to reconsider their political alignments. My claim is that business’ campaign contributions – rather than the arrangement of electoral rules, the intensity of ethnic competition, or the intervention of civil society – determines the likelihood of successful coalition bargaining among opposition politicians, particularly when those donations are concentrated on select politicians. The bargaining episodes that took place in the run-up to presidential elections held in Cameroon in 2004 and Kenya in 2002 are the focus of this chapter. The principal opposition parties in each country had previously insisted on competing independently. And the cost of such fragmentation had become obvious to all the parties involved: had opposition politicians been able to unite in any earlier election, they would have been assured victory. In Cameroon, “a bewildering fragmentation of the opposition set in, reducing its chances for success” (Takougang and Krieger 1998, 147). In Kenya, it could be said that “Daniel arap Moi did not really win these elections, a divided opposition lost them” (Grignon et al. 2001, 15). Yet, despite facing similar incentives for electoral coordination, the opposition politicians in these two countries arrived at different outcomes by their third multiparty contest. The Cameroonian opposition remained fragmented after engaging in protracted coalition negotiations, while the Kenyan opposition successfully managed to bargain themselves to a multiparty coalition with a single presidential candidate.