Multi-Ethnic Coalitions in Africa
Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns

Africa's long-ruling incumbents stay in power because opposition politicians struggle to secure the finances required to build electoral coalitions.

Leonardo R. Arriola (Author)

9781107021112, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 October 2012

324 pages, 31 b/w illus. 1 map 15 tables
24 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

"Arriola's book argues with impressive verve and great learning that African incumbents owe their political longevity to their ability to control domestic capital. In the process, he takes the reader through a comprehensive and compelling tour of post-colonial African political economy, shedding new light on a number of issues in novel ways, from the salience of ethnicity, to the relationship between independence parties and the private sector, and the success of opposition coalitions in the past decade. I believe this book represents an impressive achievement and will be considered one of the landmark works in African political economy."
Nicholas van de Walle, Cornell University

Why are politicians able to form electoral coalitions that bridge ethnic divisions in some countries and not others? This book answers this question by presenting a theory of pecuniary coalition building in multi-ethnic countries governed through patronage. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, the book explains how the relative autonomy of business from state-controlled capital affects political bargaining among opposition politicians in particular. While incumbents form coalitions by using state resources to secure cross-ethnic endorsements, opposition politicians must rely on the private resources of business to do the same. This book combines cross-national analyses of African countries with in-depth case studies of Cameroon and Kenya to show that incumbents actively manipulate financial controls to prevent business from supporting their opposition. It demonstrates that opposition politicians are more likely to coalesce across ethnic cleavages once incumbents have lost their ability to blackmail the business sector through financial reprisals.

1. The puzzle of opposition coordination
2. A theory of pecuniary coalition formation
3. The emergence of financial reprisal regimes
4. The political control of banking
5. The liberalization of capital
6. The political alignment of business
7. Opposition bargaining across ethnic cleavages
8. Multi-ethnic opposition coalitions in African elections
9. Democratic consolidation in Africa.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]