Abstract
This paper explains how presidential candidates in Africa’s highly diverse states appeal across ethnic lines when ethnic identities are salient, but broader support is needed to win elections. I argue that election campaigns are much more bottom-up and salience-oriented than current theories allow and draw on the analysis of custom data of campaign appeals in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, as well as interviews with party strategists and campaign operatives in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate clear patterns in presidential candidates’ cross-ethnic outreach. Where ethnic salience is high, incumbents offer material incentives and targeted transfers to placate supporters, challengers fan grievances to split incumbents’ coalitions, and also-rans stress unity and valence issues in the hope of joining the winner. The research contributes to our understanding of parties’ mobilization strategies in Africa and further clarifies where and how ethnic divisions are politicized in elections in plural societies.
Highlights
Much research has focused on understanding how parties assemble winning majorities in plural societies because this process has far-reaching implications for peace, democracy and development in these societies (Arriola, 2013a; Ferree, 2010; Horowitz, 1985; Posner, 2005; Rabushka & Shepsle, 1972; Rothchild, 1970)
Despite expectations that candidates would focus on rallying their ethnic bases and outsource cross-ethnic mobilization to loyal “big men,” in one of the few rigorous empirical studies of campaign targeting in Sub-Saharan Africa, Jeremy Horowitz finds exactly the opposite: even in places where ethnic block voting is common, presidential candidates delegate co-ethnic mobilization to lower party operatives and devote the lion’s share of their time and resources to courting non-coethnics (Horowitz, 2016)
I attribute this to the proximity of the race: when elections are as closely-fought as they have been in Ghana since the re-introduction of multi-party democracy, even parties with large core groups cannot rely on core voter mobilization alone, but must reach out widely
Summary
Much research has focused on understanding how parties assemble winning majorities in plural societies because this process has far-reaching implications for peace, democracy and development in these societies (Arriola, 2013a; Ferree, 2010; Horowitz, 1985; Posner, 2005; Rabushka & Shepsle, 1972; Rothchild, 1970). It complements existing conceptualizations by elaborating on the puzzling, yet common, practice of candidates courting non-coethnics in plural societies by speaking directly to their ethnic issues and concerns It presents new data on campaign appeals in Sub-Saharan Africa, which allows for rigorously testing competing theories of politicians’ incentives and outreach strategies. Differences will be starker when incumbents’ resource advantage is stronger (as in electoral authoritarian regimes) and in countries where ethnicity varies in salience and past inequalities have given rise to communal grievances along ethnic lines Another implication from the theory is that candidates’ electoral appeals will change between campaigns if their relative position changes from incumbency to opposition or vice-versa. This is a departure from the existing literature, which largely expects all candidates to converge on a single strategy—either patronage, populism, or valence appeals—throughout campaigns, and does not anticipate how candidates’ strategies might shift over time
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