Political Competition, Group Anxieties, and Ethnic Identification in Africa

• In Event: Ethnic Politics

Abstract

If political competition increases ethnic identification in Africa, does it do so at
the expense of national solidarities? Does competition also exacerbate the negative
expressions of strong ethnic attachments - coethnic favoritism, relative status concerns,
and social distance to other groups? These questions are important because the latter
attitudes and perceptions are linked to a host of ills in new democracies. In this paper,
I examine whether the proximity and competitiveness of national elections lead to
an increase in ingroup favoritism, ethnic groups’ status anxieties, and social distance
to other groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on three rounds of Afrobarometer
data for seventeen countries, I find that national identities diminish in salience relative to ethnic ones as political competition increases, and that this is accompanied by heightened perceptions of ethnically-motivated discrimination, status anxieties, and lower levels of inter-ethnic trust closer to nationally-competitive elections in particular.

Author

• Elena Gadjanova, Max Planck Institute