Articles
Gadjanova, E. (2021). "Competitive Elections, Status Anxieties, and the Relative Strength of Ethnic versus National Identification in Africa" Political Behavior, forthcoming.
Abstract: Research shows that ethnic identification increases on the eve of competitive elections in Africa, but does it do so at the expense of national solidarities? Do competitive elections exacerbate the negative expressions of strong ethnic attachments - coethnic favoritism, relative status concerns, and social distance to other groups? These questions are important because the latter attitudes and perceptions are linked to a host of ills in democracies. In this paper, I examine how the proximity and competitiveness of national elections influence ingroup favoritism, ethnic groups' status anxieties, perceived discrimination, and trust in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on six rounds of survey data for seventeen countries over fourteen years, I find that national identities diminish in salience relative to ethnic ones as political competition increases, and that this is accompanied by heightened perceptions of ethnically-motivated discrimination, increased status anxieties, and lower levels of both inter-ethnic and generalized trust closer to nationally-competitive elections. Therefore, the electoral cycle strongly influences group anxieties in plural societies where political competition is high, and should be taken into account when designing measures to mitigate ethnic polarization in multi-ethnic states.
Gadjanova, E. and Devasher, M. (2020). "Cross-ethnic Appeals in Plural Democracies" Nations and Nationalism, forthcoming.
Abstract: Whether and how parties reach across ethnic lines matters for the quality of democracy, the state of inter-ethnic relations, and substantive minority representation in plural societies. Existing explanations have focused on how politicians facing electoral incentives to seek broader support attempt to either redefine or transcend ethnic identities, but have overlooked the various ways, in which candidates from one ethnic community often directly address the ethno-political interests, concerns and demands of other communities whose votes are being courted. To address this gap, we introduce the concept and develop a typology of cross-ethnic appeals in plural democracies. Drawing on primary research in India and Kenya - two countries with salient ethnic divisions and ethnic party systems - we show that cross-ethnic appeals are common, they follow the logic of our typology, and can result in increased resources and representation for some electorally-pivotal minorities, even going beyond what coethnic politicians have offered. The article contributes to the emerging academic literature on how parties foster cross-ethnic linkages in plural societies. Our argument has implications for ethnic boundaries, the structure of political cleavages, and the substantive representation of minorities in multi-ethnic states.
Gadjanova, E. (2020) "Status quo or Grievance Coalitions: The Logic of Cross-ethnic Campaign Appeals in Africa’s Highly Diverse States", Comparative Political Studies.
Abstract: This paper explains how presidential candidates in Africa’s highly diverse states appeal across ethnic lines when ethnic identities are salient, but broader support is needed to win elections. I argue that election campaigns are much more bottom-up and salience-oriented than current theories allow and draw on the analysis of custom data of campaign appeals in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, as well as interviews with party strategists and campaign operatives in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate clear patterns in presidential candidates’ cross-ethnic outreach. Where ethnic salience is high, incumbents offer material incentives and targeted transfers to placate supporters, challengers fan grievances to split incumbents’ coalitions, and also-rans stress unity and valence issues in the hope of joining the winner. The research contributes to our understanding of parties’ mobilization strategies in Africa and further clarifies where and how ethnic divisions are politicized in elections in plural societies.
Gadjanova, E. (2019). "Treacherous Coat-tails: Gubernatorial Endorsements and the Presidential Race in Kenya's 2017 Election", Journal of Eastern African Studies, 13 (2), 272-293.
Abstract: Kenya's devolved Constitution complicated existing political dynamics in the country. With the newly-created and highly attractive positions of county governor in particular, down-ticket races became a lot more competitive, forcing parties to make some difficult choices in terms of campaign focus, the apportioning of resources across the ballots, and how to maintain or forge alliances with local leaders whose networks were key to success in the battlegrounds. Presidential candidates found themselves in a precarious position: endorsing governor aspirants in competitive races could lead to a backlash and cost them votes, failure to endorse could signal lack of confidence in key figures and thus potentially jeopardize all six positions on the ballot. This paper derives insights from theories of coat-tail effects and applies them to better understand the relationship between the races for governor and president in Kenya’s 2017 election. I argue that coat-tail effects are conditional on governors receiving clear and public endorsements by the presidential candidates and that effects flow from presidential candidates to governor aspirants in parties’ strongholds, and vice-versa in battleground counties. The incumbent Jubilee party was better able to harness gubernatorial coat-tail effects because of its ability to field single candidates and entice popular local leaders to either join the ticket or stand down in favour of ticket holders. The findings have broader implications for theories of coat-tail effects, campaign strategy, legislative fragmentation, and citizen-politician linkages in settings with personality-based politics and weakly-institutionalised parties.
Gadjanova, E. (2017). "Electoral Clientelism as Status Affirmation in Africa: Evidence from Ghana", Journal of Modern African Studies, 55:4, pp. 593-621.
Abstract: Why does electoral clientelism persist when ballots are secret and elections are competitive? The provision of material rewards during campaigns is seen as the standard way politicians secure votes in ‘patronage democracies’. Yet monitoring clientelistic bargains is difficult when voting is secret, several competitors may provide material inducements simultaneously, voters view such inducements as gifts and not obligations, and candidates’ records are more credible signals of future performance. I argue that where elections are competitive and voters expect gifts, candidates engage in a two-pronged strategy: affirm their own status through public displays of wealth, and undermine opponents’ rewards by matching inducements or encouraging voters to break reciprocity norms. In result, neither side’s gifts are sufficient for a win, and parties are forced to pursue different linkage mechanisms to voters. One such mechanism involves defining and targeting broader constituencies through policy proposals. Micro-level data from Ghana confirm these expectations. The theory is better suited to environments where candidates’ past records are known to constituents than existing explanations, and accounts for the apparent contradiction between the ubiquity of campaign clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa and recent empirical findings that performance evaluations and non-contingent incentives matter most to voters.
Supplementary appendix.
Gadjanova, E. (2017). "Ethnic Wedge Issues in Electoral Campaigns in Africa's Presidential Regimes" African Affairs, 116:464, pp. 484-507.
Abstract: Formulating ethnic wedge issues is an important, yet overlooked, strategy for cross-ethnic mobilization in Africa's presidential regimes where coalitions are needed to win elections. Ethnic wedge issues are rhetorical tools intended to splinter the support of a key opponent by employing narratives of ethnically motivated discrimination, victimization, or exclusion, and promising remedial action. They are often put forward by challengers and target minorities within incumbents’ coalitions for whom ethnicity is salient, who vote as a bloc, and who are a regional majority. Ethnic wedge issues can inflame ethnic resentments, entrench existing conflicts, and limit the space for compromise on contentious issues. Drawing on an analysis of recent presidential campaigns in Kenya and Zambia, this article illustrates the logic of the use of ethnic wedge issue appeals, as the salience of ethnicity varies within countries. It contributes to the growing literature on parties’ voter outreach strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. The research has implications for the continued salience of ethnicity in plural societies and for the structure of political cleavages in Africa's democratizing states.
Gadjanova, E. (2015). "Measuring Parties' Ethnic Appeals in Democracies" Party Politics, 21:2, pp. 309-327.
Abstract: Unlike existing approaches to the study of ethnic politics, this article argues that the political competition for ethnic votes in modern democracies is programmatic (i.e. distinguishable by its focus on issues and policies), much like the competition for voting blocs defined as based on class or gender. Analysing ethnic appeals in this manner makes them suitable for the type of quantification and comparative analyses now standard in the estimations of policy positions on a range of other issues. Once the policy concerns of ethnic communities are known, scaling and scoring them becomes possible, paving the way for quantification and rigorous comparative work. Drawing on content analysis of speeches and manifestos delivered in democracies over the past decades, the article identifies a list of political positions reflective of appeals made to ethnic communities. Further, it derives and validates two indices of ethnic campaigning using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. The measures are shown to be more robust and sensitive to nuance than existing classifications and can be readily applied to testing various hypotheses regarding the political competition for ethnic votes in democracies.
Gadjanova, E. (2013). "What is an Ethnic Appeal?" Ethnopolitics, 12:3, pp. 307-330.
Abstract: Ethnic identifications remain among the most consequential aspects of politics. Existing ‘constructivist’ models of ethnic politics rightly insist on the fluidity of individual identities, yet fail to problematize the types of appeal made to communities across cases. Collective action requires both personal identification and the clarification of the political meaning and appropriate expression of this identification, so simple references to group attributes are unlikely to suffice for mobilization. Given also that a notion of the politicization of ethnicity based on elites' strategy is central to studying the effects of institutions, power-sharing and electoral rules on inter-group relations, better understanding of what constitutes an ethnic appeal is necessary. This article derives a conceptual vocabulary and suggests a typology of political demands made on behalf of ethnic communities in multicultural democracies. Seemingly unobtrusive, these demands exhibit a structure within which claims about group authenticity and value are combined with rhetoric of rights and entitlement into arguments about representation and redistribution. Some policy positions are thus revealed as political metonymies for group identity. Analysing appeals in this fashion can aid case selection and hypothesis formulation, and contribute to tackling the long-standing issue of ‘coded’ references to race and ethnicity.
Abstract: Research shows that ethnic identification increases on the eve of competitive elections in Africa, but does it do so at the expense of national solidarities? Do competitive elections exacerbate the negative expressions of strong ethnic attachments - coethnic favoritism, relative status concerns, and social distance to other groups? These questions are important because the latter attitudes and perceptions are linked to a host of ills in democracies. In this paper, I examine how the proximity and competitiveness of national elections influence ingroup favoritism, ethnic groups' status anxieties, perceived discrimination, and trust in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on six rounds of survey data for seventeen countries over fourteen years, I find that national identities diminish in salience relative to ethnic ones as political competition increases, and that this is accompanied by heightened perceptions of ethnically-motivated discrimination, increased status anxieties, and lower levels of both inter-ethnic and generalized trust closer to nationally-competitive elections. Therefore, the electoral cycle strongly influences group anxieties in plural societies where political competition is high, and should be taken into account when designing measures to mitigate ethnic polarization in multi-ethnic states.
Gadjanova, E. and Devasher, M. (2020). "Cross-ethnic Appeals in Plural Democracies" Nations and Nationalism, forthcoming.
Abstract: Whether and how parties reach across ethnic lines matters for the quality of democracy, the state of inter-ethnic relations, and substantive minority representation in plural societies. Existing explanations have focused on how politicians facing electoral incentives to seek broader support attempt to either redefine or transcend ethnic identities, but have overlooked the various ways, in which candidates from one ethnic community often directly address the ethno-political interests, concerns and demands of other communities whose votes are being courted. To address this gap, we introduce the concept and develop a typology of cross-ethnic appeals in plural democracies. Drawing on primary research in India and Kenya - two countries with salient ethnic divisions and ethnic party systems - we show that cross-ethnic appeals are common, they follow the logic of our typology, and can result in increased resources and representation for some electorally-pivotal minorities, even going beyond what coethnic politicians have offered. The article contributes to the emerging academic literature on how parties foster cross-ethnic linkages in plural societies. Our argument has implications for ethnic boundaries, the structure of political cleavages, and the substantive representation of minorities in multi-ethnic states.
Gadjanova, E. (2020) "Status quo or Grievance Coalitions: The Logic of Cross-ethnic Campaign Appeals in Africa’s Highly Diverse States", Comparative Political Studies.
Abstract: This paper explains how presidential candidates in Africa’s highly diverse states appeal across ethnic lines when ethnic identities are salient, but broader support is needed to win elections. I argue that election campaigns are much more bottom-up and salience-oriented than current theories allow and draw on the analysis of custom data of campaign appeals in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, as well as interviews with party strategists and campaign operatives in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate clear patterns in presidential candidates’ cross-ethnic outreach. Where ethnic salience is high, incumbents offer material incentives and targeted transfers to placate supporters, challengers fan grievances to split incumbents’ coalitions, and also-rans stress unity and valence issues in the hope of joining the winner. The research contributes to our understanding of parties’ mobilization strategies in Africa and further clarifies where and how ethnic divisions are politicized in elections in plural societies.
Gadjanova, E. (2019). "Treacherous Coat-tails: Gubernatorial Endorsements and the Presidential Race in Kenya's 2017 Election", Journal of Eastern African Studies, 13 (2), 272-293.
Abstract: Kenya's devolved Constitution complicated existing political dynamics in the country. With the newly-created and highly attractive positions of county governor in particular, down-ticket races became a lot more competitive, forcing parties to make some difficult choices in terms of campaign focus, the apportioning of resources across the ballots, and how to maintain or forge alliances with local leaders whose networks were key to success in the battlegrounds. Presidential candidates found themselves in a precarious position: endorsing governor aspirants in competitive races could lead to a backlash and cost them votes, failure to endorse could signal lack of confidence in key figures and thus potentially jeopardize all six positions on the ballot. This paper derives insights from theories of coat-tail effects and applies them to better understand the relationship between the races for governor and president in Kenya’s 2017 election. I argue that coat-tail effects are conditional on governors receiving clear and public endorsements by the presidential candidates and that effects flow from presidential candidates to governor aspirants in parties’ strongholds, and vice-versa in battleground counties. The incumbent Jubilee party was better able to harness gubernatorial coat-tail effects because of its ability to field single candidates and entice popular local leaders to either join the ticket or stand down in favour of ticket holders. The findings have broader implications for theories of coat-tail effects, campaign strategy, legislative fragmentation, and citizen-politician linkages in settings with personality-based politics and weakly-institutionalised parties.
Gadjanova, E. (2017). "Electoral Clientelism as Status Affirmation in Africa: Evidence from Ghana", Journal of Modern African Studies, 55:4, pp. 593-621.
Abstract: Why does electoral clientelism persist when ballots are secret and elections are competitive? The provision of material rewards during campaigns is seen as the standard way politicians secure votes in ‘patronage democracies’. Yet monitoring clientelistic bargains is difficult when voting is secret, several competitors may provide material inducements simultaneously, voters view such inducements as gifts and not obligations, and candidates’ records are more credible signals of future performance. I argue that where elections are competitive and voters expect gifts, candidates engage in a two-pronged strategy: affirm their own status through public displays of wealth, and undermine opponents’ rewards by matching inducements or encouraging voters to break reciprocity norms. In result, neither side’s gifts are sufficient for a win, and parties are forced to pursue different linkage mechanisms to voters. One such mechanism involves defining and targeting broader constituencies through policy proposals. Micro-level data from Ghana confirm these expectations. The theory is better suited to environments where candidates’ past records are known to constituents than existing explanations, and accounts for the apparent contradiction between the ubiquity of campaign clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa and recent empirical findings that performance evaluations and non-contingent incentives matter most to voters.
Supplementary appendix.
Gadjanova, E. (2017). "Ethnic Wedge Issues in Electoral Campaigns in Africa's Presidential Regimes" African Affairs, 116:464, pp. 484-507.
Abstract: Formulating ethnic wedge issues is an important, yet overlooked, strategy for cross-ethnic mobilization in Africa's presidential regimes where coalitions are needed to win elections. Ethnic wedge issues are rhetorical tools intended to splinter the support of a key opponent by employing narratives of ethnically motivated discrimination, victimization, or exclusion, and promising remedial action. They are often put forward by challengers and target minorities within incumbents’ coalitions for whom ethnicity is salient, who vote as a bloc, and who are a regional majority. Ethnic wedge issues can inflame ethnic resentments, entrench existing conflicts, and limit the space for compromise on contentious issues. Drawing on an analysis of recent presidential campaigns in Kenya and Zambia, this article illustrates the logic of the use of ethnic wedge issue appeals, as the salience of ethnicity varies within countries. It contributes to the growing literature on parties’ voter outreach strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. The research has implications for the continued salience of ethnicity in plural societies and for the structure of political cleavages in Africa's democratizing states.
Gadjanova, E. (2015). "Measuring Parties' Ethnic Appeals in Democracies" Party Politics, 21:2, pp. 309-327.
Abstract: Unlike existing approaches to the study of ethnic politics, this article argues that the political competition for ethnic votes in modern democracies is programmatic (i.e. distinguishable by its focus on issues and policies), much like the competition for voting blocs defined as based on class or gender. Analysing ethnic appeals in this manner makes them suitable for the type of quantification and comparative analyses now standard in the estimations of policy positions on a range of other issues. Once the policy concerns of ethnic communities are known, scaling and scoring them becomes possible, paving the way for quantification and rigorous comparative work. Drawing on content analysis of speeches and manifestos delivered in democracies over the past decades, the article identifies a list of political positions reflective of appeals made to ethnic communities. Further, it derives and validates two indices of ethnic campaigning using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. The measures are shown to be more robust and sensitive to nuance than existing classifications and can be readily applied to testing various hypotheses regarding the political competition for ethnic votes in democracies.
Gadjanova, E. (2013). "What is an Ethnic Appeal?" Ethnopolitics, 12:3, pp. 307-330.
Abstract: Ethnic identifications remain among the most consequential aspects of politics. Existing ‘constructivist’ models of ethnic politics rightly insist on the fluidity of individual identities, yet fail to problematize the types of appeal made to communities across cases. Collective action requires both personal identification and the clarification of the political meaning and appropriate expression of this identification, so simple references to group attributes are unlikely to suffice for mobilization. Given also that a notion of the politicization of ethnicity based on elites' strategy is central to studying the effects of institutions, power-sharing and electoral rules on inter-group relations, better understanding of what constitutes an ethnic appeal is necessary. This article derives a conceptual vocabulary and suggests a typology of political demands made on behalf of ethnic communities in multicultural democracies. Seemingly unobtrusive, these demands exhibit a structure within which claims about group authenticity and value are combined with rhetoric of rights and entitlement into arguments about representation and redistribution. Some policy positions are thus revealed as political metonymies for group identity. Analysing appeals in this fashion can aid case selection and hypothesis formulation, and contribute to tackling the long-standing issue of ‘coded’ references to race and ethnicity.
Book chapters
Book reviews
Gadjanova, E. (2012). "Coercing, Constraining, and Signaling: Explaining UN and EU Sanctions after the Cold War" Swiss Political Science Review 18(1): 137-139.
Gadjanova, E. (2006). "The Making of the New Europe: the European Councils at Brussels and Copenhagen, 2002" Journal of Common Market Studies, March.
Gadjanova, E. (2006). "The Making of the New Europe: the European Councils at Brussels and Copenhagen, 2002" Journal of Common Market Studies, March.
