Is African politics a “racial census?” Using new survey data to measure the ethnic political cleavage in new African democracies

Robert Ford

CCSR, University of Manchester

Nicholas Cheeseman,

Jesus College, University of Oxford

Contact: rob.ford@manchester.ac.uk

Democracy in Africa: The “Third Wave” breaks on African shores

African politics prior to 1989: (i) Decolonisation (ii) Dictatorship or civil war

In 1989, 42 of 47 sub-Saharan African nations were one party states or military dictatorships

By 1994, 40 of these 42 had politically liberalised, and 16 had held free elections.

By 2007, 24 African nations were rated as electoral democracies

Over 200 million people live in African nations which made transitions to democracy since 1989

Country “Founding Election”

Established Botswana 1966

African Zimbabwe 1980-2000

Democracies Senegal 1981

Namibia 1990

Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Zambia 1991

“Third Wave” Kenya, Madagascar, Mali 1992

Democracies Lesotho 1993

Malawi, Mozambique,

South Africa

1994

Ghana 1996

Nigeria 1999-2007

Dysfunctional or Zimbabwe 1980 (RIP: c.2000)

Deceased Tanzania 1995

Democracies Nigeria 1999 (RIP c.2007)

Uganda 2001

Freedom House Ratings (1-7)

1985 1995 2005 Change

1985-2005

Benin 7 2.5 2 -5.0

Mali 6.5 2.5 2 -4.5

Ghana 6.5 4 2 -4.0

South Africa 5.5 1.5 1.5 -4.0

Mozambique 6.5 3.5 3.5 -3.0

Kenya 5.5 6.5 3 -2.5

Nigeria 6 7 4 -2.0

Zambia 5 3.5 4 -1.0

Senegal 3.5 4.5 2.5 -1.0

Uganda 4.5 4.5 4.5 0

Zimbabwe 5 5 6.5 +1.5

AB Average 5.5 3.6 2.6 -2.9

The Afrobarometer project

First ever systematic, comparative survey of African social and political attitudes First round in 1999-2001: 12 countries Second round 2002-4: 16 countries Third round 2005-6: 18 countries

Clustered, stratified, multistage area probability samples from each country. N between 1,200 and 3,600 (Mattes and Bratton, 2007)

Personal face-to-face interviews conducted in respondents’ preferred language by trained interviewers

Sample now includes most of Africa’s democracies, new and old Not a representative sample of Africa or Africans as a whole:

authoritarian regimes and countries in conflict are not surveyed

What the Afrobarometer covers

The Afrobarometer surveys have gathered information on a wide range of subjects Political: partisanship, voting, attitudes to democracy; opinion of

current leaders and government performance; political knowledge and interest; policy priorities; corruption; citizen rights and responsibilities; media consumption

Social: Employment, poverty, health, AIDS, attitudes to women, experience of public services, social trust, values

Demographics – age, sex, race, ethnicity, class, urban/rural, local conditions

Further information, data, results and analysis available at: www.afrobarometer.org

Interested in research assistance or collaboration? Contact me!

The role of ethnicity in African politics Ethnicity matters in Africa:

(i) African states are very diverse: only 2 Afrobarometer countries are ethnically homogenous. Most have five or more significant ethnic groups (extreme examples: Nigeria, Uganda)

(ii) Ethnic identities are important resources for mobilising voters in new African democracies, where knowledge and education are low, resources are scarce, and language barriers hinder cross-ethnic mobilisation (Horowitz, 1985; Posner, 2005)

(iii) In many countries, ethnicity was (is) an important factor deciding division of political resources – jobs, investment, aid

Consensus exists that ethnicity is most important cleavage in most African democracies (though debates over which ethnicities and how mobilised)

Aggregate research has examined the link between density of ethnic groups and vote for political parties (examples)

Largest

2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th Other

ELF

South Africa

Zulu 20.0

Xhosa 15.5

Afrikaans 13.5

Setswa 10.2

Spedi 10.3

English 8.7

Sesotho 7.3

14.5 0.884

Nigeria Housa 25.2

Yoruba 22.1

Igbo17.2

35.2 0.857

Ghana Akan 52.6

Dagaare 19.4

Ewe 13.5

Ga/Dangbe 5.8

12.4 0.664

Greater London

White Brit 59.8

White Other 8.3

Indian 6.1

African 5.3

Caribbean 4.8

Irish 3.1

Bangla 2.2

10.4 0.625

Zimbabwe

Shona 78.6

Ndebele 16.2

5.1 0.356

England and Wales

White Brit 87.5

White Oth 2.6

Indian 2.0

Pakist 1.4

White Irish 1.2

Caribb 1.1

African 0.9

3.3 0.231

Our approach: mapping ethnic cleavages using individual level data Utilising Afrobarometer data, we aim to create new

summary measures of ethnic (and other) cleavages in African politics

Measures will be comparable between ethnic groups, between nations and between time point

First effort to systematically map the strength of ethnic cleavages in new African democracies

Some countries omitted due to: Ethnic homogeneity (Lesotho, Cape Verde Islands) Doubts about quality of language data (Tanzania, Madagascar) Doubts about quality of party affiliation data (Benin)

Resulting sample: 10 countries,3 waves of data; 3 countries, 2 waves of data

Measures: ethnicity and party affiliation

Ethnicity measured using respondent’s self- reported home language. Advantages: clarity, comparability, respondents’ own choice Disadvantages: fragmentation; risks inclusion of irrelevant

groups; strange responses (non-existent languages); does not reflect most important ethnic cleavages

Political affiliation measured using question asking respondents whether they ID with a party. Advantages: clarity, comparability, respondents’ own

volunteered choices; availability (vote data only available in wave 3)

Disadvantages: not clear what party ID means to Africans, possibly skewed by other factors (allegiance to a President or other leader); unaffiliated not analysed

Non-affiliated to be analysed in forthcoming work

Measuring the ethnic cleavage

Why not just look directly at which groups vote for/align with which parties?

Problem - this conflates three things: changes in the popularity of different parties the size of different ethnic groups The link between ethnicity and affiliation with a particular party

To capture only the link between ethnicity and partisanship, we employ logistic regression methods

Logistic regressions capture differences in the odds of different ethnic groups affiliating with a party. Such odds ratios are margin insensitive, so isolate only the strength of the link between ethnicity and partisanship

The kappa score: a summary measure of ethnic cleavages

Logistic methods produce a more accurate picture of the strength of ethnic cleavages, but they also produce an awful lot of coefficients – complex, messy, difficult to interpret

We need a simple summary index measure of the ethnic cleavage The “kappa score” (Manza, Hout and Brookes, 1995; Brookes and

Manza, 1997): an index of the standard deviation in either regression coefficients or predicted probabilities

I.e: a measure of how much the odds of voting for a particular party varies across different ethnic groups

Flexible measure: kappas can be aggregated across parties and groups, or disaggregated to look at particular parties and groups

Comparable across nations and time points Problems of model specification – which parties/groups to include?

Small parties/groups may excessively influence results. Weighting?

Initial Findings Ethnicity is a significant influence on party choice in

nearly all Afrobarometer countries. 2 exceptions – Botswana, Senegal – are also the longest

established democracies in the sample Strength of ethnic cleavages in Africa seems to be

declining overall– 7 of 10 countries with three surveys show evidence of sustained decline in kappa scores

Large divergence in kappa levels and trends, with three main patterns: Declining ethnic cleavage, maturing democracy: Malawi, Mali,

Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa Low, stable ethnic cleavages, mature democracy: Botswana,

Senegal, Ghana Rising ethnic cleavages, unstable democracy? Kenya, Uganda,

Zambia, Zimbabwe

2001 2003 2006 Ch 2001-6

Ch 2003-6

Malawi 0.808 0.596 0.376 -0.432 -0.220

South Africa 0.736 0.636 0.572 -0.164 -0.064

Mali 0.652 0.216 0.244 -0.436 +0.028

Nigeria 0.600 0.528 0.524 -0.076 -0.004

Zambia 0.576 0.448 0.592 +0.016 +0.144

Kenya * 0.548 0.660 * +0.112

Namibia 0.520 0.468 0.384 -0.136 -0.084

Ghana 0.508 0.340 0.352 -0.156 +0.012

Uganda 0.472 0.644 0.484 +0.012 -0.160

Mozambique * 0.412 0.300 * -0.112

Senegal * 0.320 0.132 * -0.188

Botswana 0.168 0.088 0.136 -0.032 +0.048

Zimbabwe 0.148 0.192 0.264 +0.116 +0.072

AB mean (10) 0.519 0.415 0.393 -0.223 -0.022

AB mean (13) * 0.418 0.386 * -0.032

Initial findings (2) The overall party system trends mask large differences between

patterns of support for governing and opposition parties Kappa scores are generally lower for governing parties than

opposition Again, several groups of countries emerge:

Declining ethnic cleavages: countries where kappa scores are either low or declining for governing and opposition parties, suggesting ethnicity is becoming less relevant overall: Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa,

Ethnic opposition – ruling party kappa score is low or declining, but opposition parties have high or rising kappa scores, suggesting opposition to regime is concentrated in certain ethnic groups: Botswana, Malawi, Nigeria, Zambia, Uganda

Ethnic division – high and/or rising kappa scores for governing and opposition parties, suggesting deep ethnic divisions at the centre of political mobilisation: Kenya, Zimbabwe

Opposition Kappa Score

High/Increasing Low/Decreasing

GovernmentHigh/

Increasing Ethnic

division Kenya, Zimbabwe

Kappa Score Low/

DecreasingEthnic opposition

Botswana, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda,

Zambia

Declining ethnic cleavage

Ghana, Mali, Mozambique,

Namibia, Senegal, South Africa

Conclusions and limitations

Our measure represents first effort (to our knowledge) to systematically map the strength of ethnic cleavages in African democracies using individual level data

Important findings about the strength of ethnic cleavages, and apparent link between maturation of democracy in Africa and decline in ethnic cleavage

Specification and robustness: are we including all relevant parties? Ethnic groups? Would results change if we did?

Limits of language based ethnicity measure – does this capture the most significant forms of ethnic identity?

Limitations of partisanship measure - is it a meaningful measure of political affiliation in Africa? Does the measure mean the same thing in different countries?

Avenues for future research Explaining variation in kappas: why are some African

societies more ethnically divided than others? Individual ethnic groups: which groups tend to

concentrate their support behind one party, which divide their support evenly?

Political disaffection: which countries show the largest divisions in levels in party affiliation, suggesting some groups are dominating party politics while others are excluded?

Other cleavages: (a) How does the importance of ethnicity in Africa compare with other cleavages such as class, age, education, religion, urban-rural?

(b) Are other cleavages becoming more prominent as democracies mature and ethnic cleavages decline?