Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa
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Eifert Miguel and Posner 2010.pdf
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article
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Author(s)
Eifert, Benn
Miguel, Edward
Posner, Daniel N.
Date Issued
April 2010
Journal
American Journal of Political Science
Publisher
Wiley Blackwell
Citation
Eifert, Benn, Edward Miguel, and Daniel N. Posner. “Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa.” American Journal of Political Science 54.2 (2010): 494-510.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This paper draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in twenty-two public opinion
surveys in ten countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened
by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a
competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to
identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find
that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational
and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and
are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons:
because they are useful in the competition for political power.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00443.x
