A Party for Whom? How African Political Parties Acquire Ethnic Labels

• In Event: Ethnic Politics

Abstract

The dominant picture of African party systems is one in which parties are weak, party systems are volatile, and ethnicity is highly salient. Existing comparative work suggests that there is reason for this view (Weghorst & Bernard 2014). Contemporary research and current politics, however, likewise suggest that this picture masks significant variation both in electoral volatility and in ethnic bloc voting amongst political systems on the continent (Bogaards 2008, Basedau et al. 2011, Koter 2013, Nwokora & Pelizzo 2018). Some electorally competitive regimes in Africa do feature stable party systems with strong incumbent and opposition parties (e.g. Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa). In others, the parties are weak and/or volatile, with significant turnover between elections (e.g. Malawi, Benin, or Zambia). Likewise, the electoral salience of ethnicity waxes and wanes across the continent’s political systems: while local chiefs and notables serve as brokers who link members of diverse groups to different political parties in countries like Mali or Senegal, party politics is highly ethnicized in places like Ethiopia or Kenya, where bloc voting verging on an ethnic census is common in national elections.

In this paper, I argue that this variation in party volatility and ethnic salience is important for the processes by which parties organize and communicate to voters. Highly ethnicized and volatile party systems create a distinct pattern of behaviors by party leaders and coalition formateurs. In these settings, political entrepreneurs cobble together “coalitions of convenience” (Elischer 2008, 2013) in which a handful of elite politicians who stake their claims as spokespersons for their ethnic publics bargain with one another to create a system of alliances that can deliver them to power. Defections from these coalitions involve the creation of new parties and the erasure of old ones, leading to high levels of political volatility. These parties often acquire ethnically fraught “labels” or “brands” that signal who belongs to the party and to whom the party belongs (Ferree 2009). While the effects of these labels for political behavior and ethnic voting is not undisputed, in general it seems clear that many African voters use the ethnic labels that adhere to parties as heuristics to determine who is likely to benefit if the party takes power. The question of how African political parties acquire and broadcast their labels, however, is not addressed as clearly in the existing literature. While the answer would seem to be intuitive – the ethnic identity of a party’s presidential candidate is an obvious signal of the party’s identity – not all political parties will field a presidential candidate (some will join a partner in a coalition) and some ethnic groups may field putative spokespersons who join different political parties, rendering party images contested. Understanding the competitive bargaining and negotiations between elites, then, that lead to party formation remains an important question in ethnicized party systems.

In order to understand the formation of ethnic labels, I examine the campaign dynamics of elections in two African political systems with high levels of party volatility and in which ethnicity has been a salient feature: Kenya’s 2013 election to succeed outgoing President Mwai Kibaki and Malawi’s 2014 election which led to the defeat of President Joyce Banda who was hoping to win election for President as the leader of her own party for the first time. My central argument is that in both Kenya and Malawi, leaders engaged in processes of intra-ethnic competition and inter-ethnic bargaining that were shaped by elites’ command of resources, their ability to tap in to resonant narratives about group identity, and their capacity for communicating their status as national leaders capable of generating development and broad-based growth. Leaders who were able to ‘sell’ other politicians on their ability to mobilize large voting blocs had the strongest hand in forming parties or extracting maximum resources in exchange for their membership in one. This work has implications for understanding the organization of political parties in Africa, the effects of ethnicity on democratic processes, and the connection between ethnic politics and party volatility.

Author

• Kirk A. Harris, Susquehanna University