Multi-Ethnic Coalitions in Africa Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series

Why are politicians able to form electoral coalitions that bridge ethnic divisions in some countries and not others? This book answers this question by presenting a theory of pecuniary coalition building in multi-ethnic countries governed through patronage. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, the book explains how the relative autonomy of business from state-controlled capital affects political bargaining among opposition politicians in particular. While incumbents form coalitions by using state resources to secure cross-ethnic endorsements, opposition politicians must rely on the private resources of business to do the same. This book combines cross-national analyses of African countries with in-depth case studies of Cameroon and Kenya to show that incumbents actively manipulate financial controls to prevent business from supporting their opposition. It demonstrates that opposition politicians are more likely to coalesce across ethnic cleavages once incumbents have lost their ability to blackmail the business sector through financial reprisals.

1. The puzzle of opposition coordination; 2. A theory of pecuniary coalition formation; 3. The emergence of financial reprisal regimes; 4. The political control of banking; 5. The liberalization of capital; 6. The political alignment of business; 7. Opposition bargaining across ethnic cleavages; 8. Multi-ethnic opposition coalitions in African elections; 9. Democratic consolidation in Africa.

Leonardo R. Arriola is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Vice Chair of the African Politics Conference Group, a research network affiliated with the American Political Science Association, for 2011–13. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation; the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame; the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford; the Fulbright Program; and the US Department of Education. His work has appeared in journals such as Comparative Politics and Comparative Political Studies. He received the African Politics Conference Group's award for best article published on African politics in 2009.