APROBACIÓN DEL SUBSIDIO POR ENFERMEDAD 1. Contraloría General de la República

Ethnicity is commonly treated as a key factor influencing the distribution of political power in the African state (Ndegwa, 1997; Mhlanga, 2012; Berman, 1998; Rothschild, 1995; Szeftel, 2000; Azam, 2001; Langer, 2005), to the degree that ethnic heterogeneity has been used as a proxy for estimating the topography of political competition and patronage networks (Posner, 2004a). Yet this literature has two weaknesses: that it focuses mainly on patterns of exclusion rather than patterns of power- sharing and that it fails to account for volatility in elite power-sharing arrangements.

This project finds that elite power sharing arrangements are not simply a reflection of a state’s ethnic demography. While regimes tend to grant most of the main ethno-political blocs some level of inclusion within the senior government, cabinet posts are not shared proportionately between the different groups. Leaders over and underrepresent different ethnic groups within the cabinet,

demonstrating that while African cabinets rarely fit the stereotype of exclusive ethnocracies, certain ethnic groups are usually favoured over others. This raises the question of which groups are favoured,

why, and whether these imbalances reflect imbalances of political power between different ethnic constituencies.

Secondly, the project finds that the ethno-political hierarchy is volatile in some states, with formerly underrepresented groups coming to dominate the cabinet and vice-versa. This demonstrates that the political calculations of leaders and regimes are liable to change based on changes in the distribution of political power. This finding then raises the question of what events or other political factors cause leaders and regimes to change their strategies of elite power sharing, including how power is shared amongst ethnic groups, and whether these shifts in representation reflect shifts in political power. The following chapters explore these questions.

9.2.2 Economic Performance, the Pre-Electoral Period and Cabinet Volatility

This chapter is the first to investigate whether specific factors, which are deemed to affect the distribution of political power, lead to visible changes in the composition of the cabinet. The factors studied in this chapter include regime strength, economic performance and whether there is an upcoming election. Existing literature on African politics largely agrees on the importance of state largess in coalition building (Arriola, 2009; Szeftel, 2000; Lindemann, 2008; Berman, 1998) and elections are often seen as potential flashpoints for upheaval (Schedler, 2013). But how these flashpoints affect leader or regime strategies of elite management is understudied.

Logistic regressions find that cabinets are not necessarily more volatile during these stress periods: mass changes of personnel do not occur with more regularity during periods of weak economic growth and are, in fact, less common in the run up to elections. Nevertheless, permutation tests demonstrated that these stress periods do exert an influence on how leaders organise their cabinet, dependent on the strength of a regime.

Competitive regimes, which are more vulnerable to external competition, create larger and more ethnically proportionate cabinets in the run up to elections to dampen the attraction of opposition parties. Leaders in hegemonic regimes do the opposite, creating more ethnically malapportioned cabinets in pre-election periods, with the leader’s co-ethnics dominating the inner circle. This reflects the power dynamic in hegemonic regimes, where the real competition happens within the regime, often during electoral primaries, meaning leaders need to elevate their own supporters within the ruling coalition.

Leaders in competitive regimes contract their cabinet, making them smaller and less ethnically representative, during economic slumps because there are less resources to share with elites.

Conversly, leaders in hegemonic regimes can rely on accumulated resources to avoid narrowing their coalition.

This chapter demonstrates how different combinations of regime strength and external conditions influence the variety of elite power-sharing arrangements seen across Africa. The chapter provides evidence that strategies of elite power-sharing co-vary with external events which change the distribution of political power and the distribution of posts in the senior government. It therefore supports the argument that the senior government is an effective means of estimating the topography of political power in African states.

9.2.3 Regime Strength, Opposition Unity and Post-Electoral Elite Bargains

This chapter examines cabinet volatility post-elections to determine whether power-sharing strategies vary based on different power relationships between the regime and the electoral opposition. It does this by examining post-electoral cabinet reshuffles to show how different power relationships between the regime and the opposition result in leaders opting to engage in two different strategies frequently mentioned in the Africanist literature: the politics of the belly and the politics of co-option.

African regimes are described as both exclusionary, focused on cultivating the support of co-ethnics and loyal constituents, and broad-based coalitions which engage in co-option to minimise dissent (Dollbaum, 2017; Chabal and Daloz, 1999; Lindemann, 2011b; Van de Walle, 2007; Langer, 2005; Posner, 2007; Ndegwa, 1997). But the contexts which motivate leaders or regimes to favour one strategy over the other remain understudied. Chapter four (Ethnic Arithmetic and Political Calculus) showed that regimes are rarely ethnically exclusive but that different groups are over or

underrepresented at different points: this chapter demonstrates how political circumstances can lead to leaders promoting or demoting different groups.

Repeated out-of-sample non-parametric tests showed that leaders in competitive regimes co-opt ethnic groups affiliated with the opposition when democratic challengers are strong but if the opposition is fragmented, they capitalise on the opportunity to boost the representation of their co-ethnics. Leaders in hegemonic regimes also tend to grant more cabinet representation to opposition co-ethnics when facing a cohesive opposition, though this does not happen via immediate post-election reshuffles. This shows that hegemonic regimes also need to mitigate opposition threats with co-option and use the opportunity posed by a fragmented opposition to engage in the politics of the belly, but that these strategies are implemented on a slower timescale.

The main contribution of this chapter is that it contextualises popularly cited regime strategies as responses to the political environment. Regime strategies of prioritising co-ethnics or co-opting dissident groups are often treated unconditional traits of African regimes in the existing literature (Jackson and Rosberg, 1984; Van de Walle, 2007; Chabal and Daloz, 1999). This chapter also

provides robust evidence that political circumstances influence how leaders prioritise different groups within the cabinet and so furthers the argument that cabinets reflect the power dynamics in a country.

A major limitation is that the data is both limited and unbalanced, with more competitive regime observations than hegemonic regime observations. Though this chapter tried to overcome the data limitations through data resampling and partitions, there is still a possibility of both false positives and false negatives (particularly in the hegemonic regime observations).

9.2.4 Crisis Cabinets and the Influence of Protests on Elite Volatility in Africa

This chapter provides a more in-depth examination of how elite power-sharing strategies are adapted by the regime or the leader to counter specific types of political threat. It introduces the concept of ‘crisis cabinets’, where leaders instigate widespread reshuffles outside of the procedural cabinet changes which occur post-election. This chapter defines these reshuffles as occasions where more than half the cabinet is removed. By isolating cases of crisis cabinets over the past decade, the research found that these non-routine reshuffles were generally made after specific political crises or transitions. These crises included coups, factional infighting and mass protests.

Focussing on dramatic reshuffles made in response to mass protests, this chapter showed that although mass protests rarely prompt regimes to create crisis cabinets, in specific circumstances protests can have a major impact on the distribution of power in senior government. In response regimes create crisis cabinets defined by a high turnover in personnel, the dismissal of longstanding regime elites and a boost in the representation of protest hotspots. This chapter demonstrates how leaders and regimes seek to mollify public discontent through a mass influx of new elites into the power-sharing bargain. This chapter also shows that different regime types are vulnerable to different threats, with more autocratic regimes being highly vulnerable to protest while more democratic regimes are

comparatively immune. This again demonstrates how different configurations of regime traits and external threats require leaders or regimes to engage in different survival strategies and forms of elite power-sharing.

A qualitative investigation of the political and historical context of the three protest-motivated crisis cabinets, shows that they all occur when protests cause a rupture within the regime elite. This could explain why some protests lead to crisis cabinets and a major reshaping of the elite power sharing bargain and others do not. Much of the current literature on volatility at the senior government level focusses on intra-elite rivalries (Albertus, 2012; Albertus and Menaldo, 2012; Roessler, 2011; Lindemann, 2011). But this chapter demonstrates how external events can cause leaders, regimes and regime elites to alter their political calculations and perceive previously stable power-sharing bargains as unsustainable.

In the case of Tunisia, the internal rupture led to the fall of the regime and the exile of the leader. In Ethiopia, the rupture in the elite caused a reformist faction within the regime to gain dominance and

reconfigure the power-sharing arrangement. In Guinea, the protests weakened the perceived strength of the president and allowed regime, opposition and civil society elites to exact concessions.

This chapter contributes to the core question of this thesis by showing how acute political crises, which dramatically change the balance of power in a country through exposing public discontentment with the regime, result in dramatic changes in the cabinet.

9.2.5 Inclusion, Volatility and Political Violence across African Regimes

This chapter examines how different types of threat and political violence emerge from different power sharing arrangements. It expands upon the current literature’s focus on ethnic exclusion and state vs rebel civil wars to show that both included and excluded communities engage in political violence to put pressure on the regime (Østby, 2008; Buhaug et al., 2008; Roessler, 2011). Chapter four shows that African regimes are rarely exclusive ethnocracies. Furthermore, recent studies on political violence in Africa show that non-rebel violence, such as political militia activity, accounts for a large portion of violent events (Raleigh, 2016).

Quantitative tests demonstrated several key findings. Firstly, higher levels of ethnic representation do not necessarily prevent civil wars. Instead, the inequitable apportionment of cabinet posts among ethnic groups, rather than outright exclusion, increases the likelihood of anti-state rebel violence. Secondly, highly representative but malapportioned cabinets result in a higher level of anti-state violence by political militias, typically acting on behalf of elite interests. Lastly, higher levels of volatility in the cabinet increased the risk of infighting among non-state actors.

This chapter presents two key contributions. Firstly, the results show that violence is not restricted to marginalised communities but also includes elites and communities at the centre of the regime’s power-sharing bargain. This runs contrary to a common view that ethnic exclusion from state power is a principal source of political violence (Cederman et al. 2010; Wimmer 2013). This finding is

important as chapter three shows that while exclusive ethnocracies are a rarity in African states, the allocation of posts is frequently unbalanced. Instead, the analysis presents a more nuanced picture in which violence is used as a tool of competition within the political hierarchy.

Secondly, multiple studies argue elites employ violence to alter the distribution of power and

therefore alter their place within the elite power-sharing settlement (Chabal and Daloz, 1999; Raleigh, 2016; Mehler, 2007). That different traits and changes in the cabinet significantly changes the level and type of political violence indicates that cabinets are reflective of the distribution of political power.