The Politics of Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Author: Elliott Green
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414020970223
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Date: 01 June 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020970223

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(7) 1197 –1226

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414020970223

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Article

The Politics of Ethnic

Identity in Sub-Saharan

Africa

Elliott Green1

Abstract

Recent literature suggests that African Presidents tend to target co-ethnics

with patronage, especially in non-democracies. Coupled with evidence on

the role of incentives in driving ethnic identity change, I propose that a

change in the ethnic identity of the President should lead to an increase in

the proportion of people identifying with the President’s ethnic group. I use

survey data from fourteen African countries with Presidential transitions

to show that ethnic Presidential change leads to an upwards shift in the

percentage of respondents identifying with the new ruling ethnic group in

non-democracies, and that this shift increases with the level of autocracy.

I also show that countries where citizens perceive more ethnic favoritism

see higher levels of ethnic switching. Within-survey evidence from Zambia

demonstrates that this shift is immediate, and case study evidence from

early modern China suggests that this phenomenon is not limited to Sub-

Saharan Africa.

Keywords

African politics, corruption and patronage, democratization and regime change

There now exists a large literature on how ethnicity can influence politics,

especially as regards public goods distribution and conflict (Baldwin &

Huber, 2010; Franck & Rainer, 2012; Habyarimana et al., 2009; Montalvo &

1London School of Economics, London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Elliott Green, Department of International Development, London School of Economics,

Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

Email: e.d.green@lse.ac.uk

970223CPSXXX10.1177/0010414020970223Comparative Political StudiesGreen

research-article2020

1198 Comparative Political Studies 54(7)

Reynal-Querol, 2005; Posner, 2004). However, very rarely has the question

been asked the other way around, namely how politics can influence ethnic

identity, especially in the short term. Indeed, while there is a small literature

on a number of individual case studies of politically-induced identity change

(Cassan, 2015; Laitin, 1998; Posner, 2005), as well as how long-term pro-

cesses of industrialization and state-building can influence ethnic and national

identity formation (Gellner, 1983/2006; Tilly, 1994; Wimmer, 2018), there

remains a lacuna in the study of how contemporary political change can alter

ethnic identity in a broad context.

As such I propose a theory of how a change in the ethnic identity of the

President can create an incentive for citizens to switch their ethnic identity

towards that of the new President, at least in non-democratic contexts. More

specifically, recent literature on ethnic favoritism has shown how Presidents

target co-ethnics with preferred access to government employment, contracts,

roads, schools, and hospitals, especially in non-democracies where govern-

ments do not need to rely on a broad coalition for support and monitoring of

public goods provision from the media and opposition parties is weak

(Burgess et al., 2015; Franck & Rainer, 2012; Kramon & Posner, 2016;

Young, 1976). This system of discrimination creates incentives for individu-

als to identify with the President’s ethnic group, such that the more non-

democratic the regime, the greater the incentive to switch ethnic groups.

Thus, given the aforementioned literature that demonstrates the roles of polit-

ical incentives in identity change, there should be evidence of identity change

coinciding with ethnic presidential change in non-democracies.

To test this theory I use demographic survey data from fourteen African

countries that have had ethnic presidential changes and at least two compa-

rable surveys collecting data on ethnic identity. Africa is an ideal location to

examine this theory, both because most states in the continent are ethnically

diverse, thereby leading to multiple examples of ethnic presidential change,

and because many states are non-democratic. Based on data from over half a

million female respondents across 56 country surveys between 1977 and

2017 and including 25 cases of a change in the President’s ethnic identity, I

show that ethnic presidential change induces respondents to switch their eth-

nic identity towards that of the new President in non-democracies, and that

this shift increases with the level of autocracy. Moreover, the size of this shift

is significant: for a country with a Polity score of −5 on a scale of −10 to +10,

or a borderline autocracy, this shift is equivalent to 1.8% of the population.

Given the average size of the ruling ethnic group in these countries, this result

suggests that roughly one in ten people identifying with the President’s ethnic

group in such a country would have previously identified with another group.