Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 2/5/2008
The Cleavage Model, Ethnicity and Voter Alignment in Africa:
Conceptual and Methodological Problems Revisited
December 2007
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract
Voting behaviour in Africa is predominantly explained by factors such as ethnicity, personal linkages, and clientelism (Hyden & Leys 1972; Barkan 1979; Bratton & Van de Walle 1997; Van de Walle 2003; Scarritt & Mozzafar 1999; Mozzafar et al. 2003; 2005; Erdmann 2004; Posner 2005: 217-250). As indicated by a recent anthology (Berman et al. 2004), ethnicity as a social cleavage has gained a prominent place in the understanding of politics in Africa. While many authors seem to accept the prominence of ethnicity as a given fact, only a few have tried (and in different ways) to explain the relevance of ethnicity in the context of Seymour M. Lipset’s and Stein Rokkan’s (1967) social cleavage model. This is a model which provides an analytical framework for the formation of political parties and the structuring of voter alignment (Scarritt & Mozaffar 1999; Weiland & Erdmann 2001; Erdmann 2004).
