Rethinking the African Countryside

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Despite rapid urbanisation over the past decade, 60% of Africa’s population lives in rural areas. Many scholars of African politics see the continent’s rural sector as a stable realm where traditional, clientelistic, authoritarian and customary practices predominate until more democratic urban, modern and programmatic ones replace them. Yet some have begun to challenge these assumptions by pointing to the historical, evolving and reciprocal nature of citizen-state relations in rural settings. Moreover, scholars have started to complicate the link between rural and urban politics by demonstrating important connections that exist between the two spheres both in relation to policy attitudes and group ties.

This panel delves into the implications of changes in Africa’s rural politics. Are rural areas stable sites of patronage for leaders with regressive autocratic hopes, or are they themselves locations of resistance for progressive, liberal and pro-poor policy? What are the links between the urban and rural spheres, especially under newly democratic regimes? What do those dynamics teach us about the nature of democratization and democratic stability in Africa? These questions are important in an age of authoritarian backsliding, rising inequality, food insecurity, climate change and socio-economic transformation.

The papers in this panel use a diverse set of methodological approaches to analyze how rural areas might be the instigators for change in national politics, whether in terms of concrete, pro-poor policies or populist, patronage-based politics. Catherine Boone uses spatial analysis to explore the emergence of ideological voting issues through consistent rural voting blocs in East and West Africa. Alesha Porisky’s paper examines the changing nature of rural citizenship and resource allocation in rural Kenya, a country commonly understood to be governed by patronage. Carolyn Holmes focuses on South Africa and asks how both Zulu and Afrikaans ethnonationalist populist parties made gains in rural areas in the 2019 elections despite the country’s long history of multiracial democracy. Alex Dyzenhaus’s paper looks at survey data and interview evidence across three cases in Southern Africa to understand the complexities of rural attitudes towards land redistribution, which is often seen as a top-down, populist, patronage tool.

Sub Unit

• Division 53: African Politics

Individual Presentations

• Regional Cleavages and Spatial Inequalities in Rural Electoral Dynamics - Catherine Boone, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

• Landless Divisions: Determinants of Land Policy Preferences in Southern Africa - Alex Dyzenhaus, Cornell University

• Fighting Back: Rural Populism and Opposition in South Africa's 2019 Election - Carolyn Ethel Holmes, Mississippi State University

• The State at the Margins: Cash Transfers and Citizenship in Western Kenya - Alesha Porisky, Northern Illinois University

Chair

• Alexandra Hartman UCL

Discussant

• Rachel Beatty Riedl Cornell University