This article presents ACPED-the African Cabinet and Political Elite Data project. This project is a disaggregated set of cabinet ministers and positions by country month from 1997 into real time. Political representation of groups across Africa is often portrayed as a result of static, predictable ethno-demographic arithmetic. An associated perception is that regimes are ethnically exclusive as leaders over-represent co-ethnics, close allies and some strong challengers as a coup-proofing exercise. This paper measures the heterogenous political environments developing across African states, and presents evidence that African states are largely ethnically and regionally inclusive in formal political positions, with relatively low levels of co-ethnic favoritism and large group dominance. In modern autocracies and transitioning democracies, leaders select cabinet coalitions of elites that broadly inclusive, but distort the levels of power groups and elites enjoy within senior ranks. All ministers and ministries experience significant volatility, in line with how regimes manage, maintain and limit the influence of inclusive coalitions. In short, leaders keep power by spreading it around, but limiting the chances of others to capture it. Recent studies reinforce that African regimes cultivate corrupt practices, but find little evidence of exclusivity or co-ethnic favoritism as a standard and widespread practice (

Conflict across African states has often been linked to ethnic-based biases in government, and exclusive policies. However, the domestic politics of developing states, and the elites who contest for power therein, have often been overlooked when explaining the patterns and risk of disorder and violence. We consider how African leaders practice politics in whom to represent, and at what level. These choices have consequences as how regimes accommodate political elites creates different competitive conditions which, in turn, create incentives and opportunities for political violence. Using a dataset on cabinet appointments over twenty years, we find that high levels of elite political inclusion and mal-apportionment in positions is consistently associated with increases in non-state violence. Power distribution levels among those groups included in senior positions account for more political violence than that which stems from exclusive politics.

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Personal relations and networks have long been argued to dominate African politics. Since personal power is difficult to measure, much of the literature has remained either anecdotal or has used ethnicity to approximate power distributions. This article is proposing a social network approach to the analysis of personal power in legislatures and cabinets in three cases: Ghana, Togo and Gabon. We combine survey data on parliamentary discussion networks with a new data set on cabinet appointments. We find that power accumulation in one institution correlates with power accumulation in the other in all three countries, irrespective of the level of democracy: individuals build up a unique power base to advance their careers. We also find differences between the modes of power accumulation and elite integration across our cases. Our findings could stimulate new debates on personal power, regime survival and elite reproduction across different regimes.