Programmatic Competition? Evidence for a Rural-Urban Divide in African Elections

• In Event: New Perspectives on Political Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Elections in Africa have widely been regarded as devoid of issues and ideology. Yet, there is little systematic analysis on the extent of programmatic competition. We reconsider the standard view using automated text analysis to scale the dominant dimension of conflict present in parties' manifestos from recent elections in seven African countries. Our findings show that incumbents tend to propose pro-rural policies, while the opposition tends to focus on pro-urban policies. Furthermore, we use public opinion data from the Afrobarometer survey to evidence that the more pro-rural the policies parties propose, the more likely they are supported by rural voters. These findings suggest a dimension of conflict similar to a center-periphery cleavage observed historically in European politics. Our findings, further, suggest that issues and the positions parties take on them matter more for vote choice than previous accounts have indicated.

Authors

• Zachary David Greene, University of Strathclyde

• Mascha Rauschenbach, University of Mannheim