WINNING COALITIONS AND ETHNO-REGIONAL POLITICS: THE FAILURE OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE 1990 AND 1995 ELECTIONS IN COTE D'IVOIRE

Abstract

Why is that former dominant or single party regimes, especially those in Africa, have generally survived and even emerged strengthened after the introduction of multi-party competitive elections? In Cote d'Ivoire since 1990 the ruling party has been able to win elections by using incumbency to present itself as the organization most likely to be capable of putting together a winning coalition. In a society segmented by a multiplicity of cultural and religious divisions and where political power is a zero-sum game, the logic of democratic representation means that no group can afford to be excluded. Yet in the 1990 and 1995 Ivorian elections the opposition attacked the ethnic character of the government and deliberately mobilized ethnic minorities, regional and religious (Islamic) sentiments. They therefore failed to escape, in electoral terms, from their extremely localized strongholds. Their attempt to mobilize around an anti-foreigner platform in 1990 rebounded in 1995 when the government itself took over their 'ultra-nationalist' stance by excluding non-Ivorians from the elections. The consequent exclusion of the opposition's favoured Presidential candidate and the failure of the opposition alliance to agree on a non-northern, non-Islamic alternative candidate led to a violent boycott and the eventual collapse of the opposition alliance. Competitive elections, party systems and the African state BETWEEN OCTOBER 1995 AND February 1996 Cote d Ivoire held its second set of multi-party competitive elections, following on the 1990 elections which had brought to an end thirty years of stable single party rule. Like many other similar states, however, such elections have had only a limited impact on the continuing dominance of the former single party; the expectations of Inany external advocates of liberal democracy that liberalization would release pent-up popular pressures for radical change or the replacement of too-comfortably entrenched political elites have, on the whole, not been met. Cote d'Ivoire therefore provides an excellent case for studying the effect of the introduction of competitive Richard Crook teaches in the Department of Politics, University of Glasgow. He is grateful to the Nuffield Foundation and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for their generous financial support, without which the field work upon which this research is based would not have been possible. All opinions expressed are his own. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association of the UK Glasgow, April 1996.