The Ethnicity–Policy Preference Link in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Author: Evan S. Lieberman,Gwyneth H. McClendon
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414012463876
• Published date: 01 May 2013
• Date: 01 May 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Comparative Political Studies

46(5) 574 –602

© The Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414012463876

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463876CPS46510.1177/0010414012463876Compar

ative Political StudiesLieberman and McClendon

© The Author(s) 2011

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1Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

2Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Evan S. Lieberman, Department of Politics, Princeton University, 239 Corwin Hall, Princeton,

NJ 08544, USA.

Email: esl@princeton.edu

The Ethnicity–Policy

Preference Link in

Sub-Saharan Africa

Evan S. Lieberman1

and Gwyneth H. McClendon2

Abstract

Scholars have begun to investigate the mechanisms that link ethnic diversity

to low levels of public goods provision but have paid only minimal atten-

tion to the role of preferences for public policies. Some argue that ethnic

groups hold culturally distinctive preferences for goods and policies, and that

such differences impede effective policy making, but these studies provide

little evidence to support this claim. Others argue that preferences do not

vary systematically across ethnic groups, but again the evidence is limited. In

this article, we engage in a systematic exploration of the link between eth-

nic identity and preferences for public policies through a series of individual

and aggregated analyses of Afrobarometer survey data from 18 sub-Saharan

African countries. We find that in most countries, preferences do vary based

on ethnic group membership. This variation is not merely an expression of

individual-level socioeconomic differences or of group-level cultural differ-

ences. Instead, we suggest that citizens use ethnicity as a group heuristic for

evaluating public policies in a few predictable ways: We find more persistent

disagreement about public policies between politically relevant ethnic groups

and where group disparities in wealth are high.

Keywords

ethnicity, policy preferences, ethnic fractionalization, Africa, public goods

Lieberman and McClendon 575

A large and influential body of scholarship has demonstrated that ethnic hetero-

geneity is associated with both bad policies and poor development outcomes

across a range of sectors and in polities of varied scale (Alesina, Baqir, & East-

erly, 1999; Easterly & Levine, 1997; Miguel, 2004; Montalvo & Reynal-Querol,

2005; Putnam, 2007). Although nuances have emerged concerning exactly how

to conceptualize or to measure ethnic diversity, including an increasing focus on

socially or politically relevant ethnic categories (Alesina, Devleeschauwer, East-

erly, Kurlat, & Wacziarg, 2003; Posner, 2004a; Wimmer, Cederman, & Min,

2009) and on the degree of economic inequality across ethnic groups (Baldwin &

Huber, 2010), the overall pattern is consistent: Ethnically diverse societies are

more prone to policy conflict, are less likely to enact development-enhancing

public policies and to provide public goods,1 and tend to grow more slowly.

But what is the mechanism that links ethnic diversity to bad policies and

poor development outcomes? Specifically, is the link preference diversity?

Within studies identifying the negative consequences associated with ethnic

diversity, scholars have often posited or implicitly assumed that ethnic groups

have different preferences over public policies. They assume that citizens

generally want something from government, such that the central question of

demand is not whether to provide goods and services but which ones and to

whom.2 Easterly and Levine (1997, pp. 1215-1216) identify several examples

in which scholars have claimed that ethnic groups will have different tastes

for goods and services provided by governments. Other scholars have advo-

cated decentralization, particularly in ethnically diverse countries, on the

grounds that smaller and more localized groups are more likely to share pref-

erences for public goods, making it easier to formulate and implement public

policies (Wibbels, 2006). If members of different ethnic groups tend to sys-

tematically disagree over the kinds of public policies they want the govern-

ment to focus on, then, all else equal, it should be difficult in ethnically

diverse places for citizens to coordinate lobbying efforts for public goods, or

for politicians to gain wide support for public spending ventures (Habyarimana,

Humphreys, Posner, & Weinstein, 2009; Miguel, 2004).

But many scholars argue that ethnic group membership is not associated

with policy preferences, focusing instead on the strategic nature of ethnic

politics to explain the relationship between ethnic diversity and poor devel-

opment outcomes. For example, Bates (1974), Chandra (2004), and Posner

(2005) describe ethnic political competition as primarily a battle over who

gets the spoils from public policies rather than over what those public policy

priorities should be. Such works generally assume a greater universality to

individuals’ public policy preferences. In these models, the negative conse-

quences of ethnic politics have more to do with ethnic nepotism.