Political Cleavages in a Democratizing Society

Abstract

Research into the structure of political cleavages suggests that ethnicity, class, and urban-rural divide are the main explanatory social variables of political conflict in Africa. This article examines the validity of this argument and suggests that the unofficial economy seems to create new lines of political polarizations as African countries democratize. ANOVA, logistic regression, and two stage-logistic regression of survey data collected in the Congo in 1991-1992 show that the unofficial economy is more likely to minimize political cleavages than other lines of social divisions that dominate the literature on African political cleavages. In addition, overlapping cleavages tend to polarize a more homogeneous setting and crosscutting cleavages are typical of a heterogeneous environment.