Democracy and Ethnic Diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Political Mobilization and Electoral Politics in Africa

Abstract

Despite substantial amounts of democratization since the end of the Cold War in Sub-Saharan Africa, there remains very little attention on how political change can affect ethnic identity in the most ethnically diverse region of the world. I argue that democratization should generate higher levels of ethnic diversity due to the increased political relevance that democracy brings for ethnic minorities. Using survey data from over 1.8 million respondents from 36 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, I show that democratization is indeed associated with an increase in ethnic fractionalization, and that this association is driven by increased representation of ethnic minorities in national legislatures. This result is not only robust to the use of two-way fixed effects, a variety of controls and sub-samples and both levels and first differences, but also the use of country-president fixed effects, which shows that the effect takes place even within president regimes. I supplement my quantitative results with the qualitative case of Burkina Faso, where democratization has been accompanied by a decline in the proportion of people identifying as members of the Mossi majority. I conclude with some broader thoughts on the relationship between democratization and ethnic and national identities.

Author

• Elliott D. Green, London School of Economics