Ethnic Politics and Campaign Strategies in Contemporary Africa

Book excerpt: This dissertation examines variation in campaign strategies in Africa's nascent democracies with a focus on political parties in Ghana and Kenya. The research methods involve both a content analysis of campaign appeals covered in newspapers as well as interviews with political elites in Ghana and Kenya. I argue two main points. First, variation in campaign strategies is largely due to differences in the ethnic makeup of parties' bases of support. Parties that draw a majority of their support from a single large ethnic group are more likely to develop campaign strategies that emphasize clear proposals for national public goods. I argue that these parties use such strategies to counteract fears among the electorate of domination and exclusion by the large ethnic core of the party. Second, I argue that when party systems are more fragmented and volatile, politicians are more prone to rely on intermediaries, such as ethnic elders and community spokesmen, to recruit voters. This approach leads to a higher frequency of overt ethnic appeals during campaigns. Alternatively, when party systems are more institutionalized, party elites choose to work through grassroots party structures rather than ethnic intermediaries. Campaign discourse is then dominated by party officials pursuing national agendas rather than narrower ethnic agendas. The findings contribute to the scholarship on ethnic politics, political parties in new democracies, and the politics of public goods provisions.