Varieties of Clientelism: Findings from Africa

• In Event: Political Partisan Linkages in Competitive Party Systems: DALP II 2022-24 Survey

Abstract

Political parties in Africa have long been assumed to be strongly clientelist in nature, but the evidence supporting these claims has often been based on single party studies in a small number of countries (e.g., Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia). In this paper, we draw on new data from the Democratic Accountability and Linkage Project II to present the first fine-grained study of clientelist linkage mechanisms across 15 African countries. This regional report will not only contribute to recent findings about the surprising strength of African parties’ organizational structures, but also provide new insights into voter-party exchanges, and the relationship between party organization and linkage mechanisms. Further, it will both showcase the new DALP II data and provide a descriptive overview of clientelism in Africa, highlighting the role of different party types across the sample (e.g., former liberation movements and regional opposition parties), as well as the variety of regime types ranging from authoritarian Zimbabwe to democratic Ghana. The findings have important implications for electoral politics on the continent and beyond.

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Authors

• Hangala Siachiwena, University of Cape Town

• Sarah Jane Lockwood, University of Cambridge

• Matthias Werner Krönke, University of Reading