Status-quo or Grievance Coalitions: The Logic of Cross-ethnic Campaign Appeals in Africa’s Highly Diverse States

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.

In-Group Anger or Out-Group Ambivalence? How Voters Perceive Rule-Based Direct Transfers in India

“…There is robust evidence of ethnic favoritism in multi-ethnic developing countries (Posner 2005;Dunning and Nilekani 2013;Conroy-Krutz 2013;Burgess et al 2015;Thachil and Teitelbaum 2015;Kramon and Posner 2016;Ejdemyr, Kramon, and Robinson 2018;Auerbach and Thachil 2018;Gulzar, Haas, and Pasquale Forthcoming), including in access to politicians (Marcesse 2018;Mc-Clendon 2016). Even so, politicians in ethnified systems sometimes build broader coalitions that involve giving benefits to members of some other ethnic groups (Arriola 2013;Ichino and Nathan 2013;Thachil 2014;Gadjanova 2021). They do so without weakening their core support base, which hinges on maintaining their reputation as the champion of their ethnic group's material interests.…”

“…Ethnicity also shapes how citizens process information, and evaluate politicians' performance (Adida et al 2017). As a result, politicians strongly value their reputation with co-ethnics, and are only willing to benefit out-groups if that does not dilute their core support base (Ichino and Nathan 2013;Thachil 2014;Gadjanova 2021).…”