| Review of: | Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Helen E. Purkitt |
| Reviewed in: | International Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: | 10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 09, Issue 02, Pages 293-294 |
African Politics and the Strategic Use of Ethnic Identity
In past studies of African politics, a great deal of attention has focused on the role of ethnic conflicts as a root cause of political violence. Daniel Posner, in
What makes Posner's case study of a single African nation-state of potential interest to a wider audience than African scholars is the fact that he attempts to use past theoretical and empirical work on voting behavior. In particular, he uses William Riker's (1962) concept of a minimum winning coalition to explain when and why Zambian voters are likely to emphasize tribalism over their broader language identity. Posner also relies upon past research on social learning and institutional change to develop a framework to predict ethnic identity choices (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Laitin 1986).
Much like voters in other multiethnic democracies, Posner posits that voters in Zambia change the aspect of their ethnic identity that they highlight in order to become members of a minimum winning political coalition. This proposition is a controversial one because Posner assumes that voters make explicit and consistent choices to emphasize one ethnic identity over another based on strategic calculations about the size of the group that the identity defines. Thus, even though he acknowledges the importance of affect and other factors (that is, familial and social networks and social class), he nonetheless posits that Zambians are rational choosers. Posner develops a simple predictive model of what will happen if everyone in a society votes strategically on the basis of such an identity choice. The model is not an accurate description of how voters vote. However, Posner's ethnic matrix is a useful macro-analytical and predictive tool that requires analysts to understand what the most salient ethnic dimensions in a society are and how these divisions are likely to vary with changes in the political system (that is, the type of party system or changes in electoral rules).
The central proposition in Posner's model is that voters' decisions vary as a function of fundamental changes in political institutions. He looks at how Zambians' ethnic identity varied during elections under multiparty and single-party systems. He posits that a person's tribal identity will be more salient when elections are held under a single party system whereas membership in one of four broader language groups will be stressed by voters, candidates, and party officials when elections are held in a multiparty system. Posner argues that Zambia is a good test case of the relationship between ethnic identity and the type of party system because the country has transitioned from a multiparty to a single party state and back to a multiparty state during the postindependence period.
Posner uses data from several different types of sources, including historical studies, election results, surveys, field observations, and interviews. He examines each hypothesis using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. His quantitative analyses support the existence of a statistically significant but weak-to-moderate relationship between the type of party system and the most salient dimension of ethnicity. However, when Posner takes into account whether a survey respondent is a rural or urban resident, he finds that his main generalization only holds for Zambians living in rural areas. Little evidence links choices about ethnic identity to party system among urban voters for whom tribal affiliations are less important.
Posner concludes by discussing the relevance of his model for other nation-states. Only a handful of African states have elections based on the kind of single-member plurality electoral rules used in Zambia. These former British colonies include such diverse countries as Sierra Leone (prior to the recent civil war) and Kenya (where ethnicity has long played an important role as a source of political patronage). However, Posner claims that the logic embodied in his model may also be useful for understanding the dynamics of electoral politics in many multiethnic societies in other parts of the world.