F ORMALIZACIÓN DEL ALGORITMO PROPUESTO

7.1 Introduction

Cabinets are the locus of government policy decision-making and state patronage opportunities, and cabinet changes are an important tool for sharing power and managing competing elites, groups and interests (Francois et al., 2015; Quiroz-Flores and Smith, 2011). An increasing body of literature interprets the appointment, reshuffling and dismissal of senior government officials as a tool of political survival (Kroeger, 2018; Martinez-Gallardo, 2014; Camerlo and Pérez-Liñán 2015; Arriola, 2009; Quiroz-Flores and Smith, 2011; Francois et al., 2015).

However, this logic is often focused only on internal machinations within the regime and party. But events – such as political crises, disasters or elections – can mean previously effective elite power- sharing strategies become ineffective at ensuring political survival. Regimes and leaders across the world find themselves in positions where the composition of the elite within the government becomes unstable and threatens the political survival of either the leader or the regime. Governments in western democracies frequently fall due to internal competition between parties or rival figures within the government, and leaders may apply drastic changes to their governments to retain the confidence of either the public or their party (Saalfeld, 2008; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo, 2008; Indridadson and Kam, 2008). Other studies in non-western contexts have examined how volatility in the ruling elite has emerged from political crises such as scandals, intra-elite conflict, drops in popularity and economic stress (Martinez-Gallardo, 2014; Camerlo and Pérez-Liñán 2015; Roessler, 2011).

This study introduces the notion of ‘crisis cabinets’, defined as instances in which regimes drastically reorganises ruling coalition in response to political crises, outside of the routine cabinet changes caused by elections or democratic regime change. This study seeks to contribute to the existing literature that explores the composition and functioning of executives within and across African states, as well as their interaction with political crises. Existing studies which examine how regimes alter their coalitions in response to crises focus on European and Latin American governments (Saalfeld, 2008; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo, 2008; Indridadson and Kam, 2008; Martinez-Gallardo, 2014; Camerlo and Pérez-Liñán 2015). This study examines crisis cabinets in African states.

Specifically, this study examines the effect of a specific form of crisis that is occurring more frequently across Africa. Recent events such as the 2011 Arab Spring means that there is growing international interest in mass protest movements as a force for change, echoing the academic interest which followed the Third Wave of Democratisation in Africa and former Soviet Republics in the 1990s (Carothers and Youngs, 2015). Protest movements involving large parts of the civilian population for an extended period of time, occur in part because the participants believe that these actions can affect

the composition and direction of national, senior government. We investigate the effects and efficacy of protest movements on the formation of crisis cabinets, and specifically inquire how regimes change the composition of ruling elites to address the threat posed by mass protests.

Recent events in Africa have increased this interest and suggested protest movements do impact senior, national government composition. April 2019 saw the toppling of two of Africa’s longest serving autocrats – Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir – following weeks of sweeping popular protests that brought millions of people to the streets (Kushkush, 2019). Both leaders attempted to placate protesters through the mass dismissal of senior government officials, including cabinet ministers and local governors but were ultimately unsuccessful in securing their own leadership (Africa Confidential, 2019a; Abdelaziz, 2019). Subsequently, segments of the wider regime elite debated and competed over what form a successor government should take to address the crisis (Africa Confidential, 2019a; Africa Confidential, 2019b).

Examples like these may seem to suggest that protest movements do cause changes within the elite, but there is little firm evidence about whether this is the exception or the norm, and what kind of changes protests force on the regime. While there have been studies examining mass protests in Africa (Bratton and Van de Walle, 1992; Carey, 2002) and others analysing cabinet instability (Arriola, 2009; Francois et al., 2015; Kroeger, 2018), existing studies have not examined the relationship between the two. Cross-national studies of African protests have tended to focus on the composition of collective movements (De Waal and Ibreck, 2013), the urban-rural divide (Isaacman, 1990) or the links between different forms of contestation (Branch and Mampilly, 2015), but have failed to systematically account for the impact of protest movements on cabinet instability, government composition and the regime’s use of elite accommodation strategies. Through an exploratory study of a selected number of African executives, this study aims to provide a better understanding of how regimes tailor their ruling coalitions to mitigate political crises and try to ensure their survival.

This study proceeds by reviewing the literature on cabinets as tools of coalition building and mitigation mechanisms for political crises. Using quantitative data on African cabinets and protests, we examine whether there is a strong correlation between public protest and cabinet volatility, and whether protests are a common trigger for ‘crisis cabinets’. We then investigate whether protest- motivated crisis cabinets differ from other forms of crisis cabinet and, if so, what unique features they possess. Finally, we examine how the protests studied succeeded in forcing the regime to significantly change their coalition and how the cabinet changed in response to protester demands.

Overall the study finds that protests are not robustly correlated with cabinet volatility and are responsible for only a sixth of the crisis cabinets studied. It does suggest however that when, in rare cases, protests do spur the creation of crisis cabinets, regimes create cabinets specifically designed to mollify and address protester demands. The cases where protests are influential in prompting crisis

cabinets are those where the nature of the protests causes a split within the ruling elite, making the leader vulnerable to internal threats and the regime liable to disintegration.