Social structure

African societies are characterized by different layers of linguistic, religious and ethnic fragmentation. According to Erdmann (2007a; 2007b), this is the most essential social

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cleavage in Africa, when it comes to explain party formation and voting behavior. Thus, its inclusion in this study is more than natural.

«There are roughly 1000 tribes across Sub-Saharan Africa, most with their own distinct language and customs» (Moyo 2009, 32). They have persisted since pre-colonial periods, despite undergoing changes that have to do, for instance, with a new spatial distribution during the colonial and immediate postcolonial period (Migdal 1988; Thomson 2004). Furthermore, they played a leading role in the process of national and state building and continued doing so in the new multiparty framework. In light of this, several studies have discussed how the African party systems – unlike Western European countries where party systems were mainly structured along the functional dimension53 – were largely influenced by territorial dimension, from which the ethnic and regional divides emerge (Hodgkin 1961; Randall and Svåsand 2002b; Manning 2005). Hodgkin’s (1961) seminal study classified the earliest party formations in Africa in four groups: 1) inter-territorial parties, which transcended the frontiers of single states; 2) territorial parties which take as their field of operation a given colonial or independent territory and the population contained within its frontiers; 3) regional, ethnic, or tribal parties with limited range of influence to a particular region or a particular community based on ties of history, culture, religion or kinship and finally 4) “dwarf” parties that were restricted to the inhabitants of a particular locality. From the 153 major political parties operating in Africa between 1945 and 1960, more than 60% were territorial political parties, while 15% were ethnically or regionally-based parties. The ethnic and territorial sources of Africa’s contemporary parties and party systems can thus be traced to the first wave of party formation and mass mobilization in the continent (1945- 1960).

In line with Hodgkin, Manning (2005) argues that new parties and party systems emerged mainly from already crystallized territorial and ethnic cleavages, and out of the elites’ urgent need to compete in the new multiparty setting. The introduction of multiparty elections, however, brought some limitations, albeit formal, and to some extent cosmetic, to the mobilization of these type of cleavages in party competition. In fact, several countries included legal bans on particularistic, regional and ethnic-based political parties (Bogaards

53 _{The functional dimension results from the industrial revolution and expresses two types of conflict: (i) the} conflict between land interest and the rising class of industrial entrepreneurs and (ii) the conflict between owners and employers on the one hand and tenants, and workers on the other hand. The functional oppositions can only develop after some initial consolidation of the national territory. Therefore, it is required that the nation building process is completed, according to Lipset and Rokkan (1990, 99).

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2007; Bogaards, Basedau, and Hartmann 2010)54 in their constitutions or party regulations, even if, in practice, only few countries actually used these provisions and denied registration or banned existing parties (Hartmann and Kemmerzell 2010). Regardless of the extent to which these bans are actually being implemented, their simple formal existence has implications for political competition. Salih (2003) makes a point that these provisions could have led many political parties to strategically adopt names that reflect some ideological orientation – e.g. liberal, democratic, social, socialist, or conservative – instead of a territorial or ethnic preference, despite the fact that their true political offer is anchored in ethnic and territorial issues and ideology plays a limited role in party politics (Salih 2003, 27-28).

In the same vein, Norris and Mattes (2003) conducted a comparative quantitative study on 12 African states55 using Afrobarometer data and found out that ethnicity strongly influenced party identification and voting behavior. Using a different methodology, in the sense that the study is based upon a range of country-specific case-studies (Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ethiopia), Salih (2001) reaches similar conclusions. More specifically, the backing of an ethnic group – the dominant ethnicity – plays an important part in the electoral victory of certain political parties. While highlighting the role of ethnicity, these studies also point to other relevant factors, namely political parties’ ability to enact strategic alliances in constituencies of smaller ethnic groups (Salih 2001), the rural-urban cleavage, the role of age and the impact of education (Norris and Mattes 2003). Elsewhere, the presence of such social cleavages has been considered relevant for the stabilization of political systems as they solidify the ties between parties and the public, thus increasing the predictability of political outcomes (Tavits 2005, 287). This line of argument follows the seminal study by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) about the basis for the stability of West European party systems. Nonetheless, in the African continent, cleavages are not primarily functional but territorial instead; and higher levels of ethnic fractionalization have been associated with higher levels of political instability and to the weakness of political institutions (Horowitz 1985; Noyoo 2000; Alesina et al. 2003; Salih and Nordlund 2007). Salih and Nordlund (2007, 26) defend that «ethnic mobilization, whether for political party formation, electoral campaigns or patronage, is commonplace and, when combined with economic disparity and inequitable access to

54 _{Bogaards, Basedau and Hartmann’s (2010, 611) study tells us that « [...] it is the group of less democratic} regimes that actually ban political parties, at least partially as a strategy to control the opposition. Or, in countries which have witnessed an alternation of authoritarian and (more) democratic periods, such as Nigeria, [...] that ethnic party bans are implemented by outgoing military regimes and much less so in the new democratic dispensations».

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The twelve states are: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Mali.

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political power, could (and has actually) become a source of long-drawn-out conflicts, with far reaching destabilization effects». Lastly, Ferree’s (2010) study is also revealing in that it shows that «African countries with a single majority ethnic group have systematically lower volatility levels than countries with no majority ethnic group or countries with multiple nested majority groups» (Ferree 2010, 779). Taken together, these studies lead us to H1: PSI will be lower where levels of ethnic fractionalization are higher.