1 The Political Carousel: Elite Power-sharing, Political Instability and the Allocation of Senior Government Posts in Africa Daniel Wigmore-Shepherd A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography University of Sussex September 2019 2 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature: ..................................................................................... Date:..................................................................................... ..... 3 Acknowledgements There are large amount of people, without whom, I would have not been able to complete this thesis. Firstly I would like to thank my primary supervisor Clionadh Raleigh. Professor Raleigh’s tireless energy and vision provided guidance throughout my time at Sussex. Her knowledge, feedback and encouragement were integral to the completion of this project, and she has my deepest thanks. Secondly, I want to thank my colleagues and friends James Moody and Andrea Carboni. Our time jointly managing ACLED and working on joint papers was at times stressful, but always instructive and rewarding. I would also like to thank our old manager Caitriona Dowd, who taught us the discipline to be able to handle our responsibilities in the latter part of our studies. There are other members of faculty I would like to thank: Professor Katie Walsh for helping get back on track during a period when I considered even leaving the project; Professor Dominic Kniveton for his continued advice, good humour and slight irritation of Professor Raleigh; Dr Daniel Watson for his always interesting conversation. Thirdly, there are the workers who helped me compile the data necessary for this research project. There are almost too many people to count who made this research project possible, but I would like to extend special thanks to my core team of data workers: Hazem Abu Habib, Camille Maala, Catrin Hepworth, Andrea Carboni, Stern Kita and Rob Dickenson. Then there are the various people who made my time in Brighton fun. I would like to thank my housemates and friends: James Moody, Tristan Blackburn, Ethan Potter, Oli Winston, Zach Payne, Tyler Alion and Ant Hayes for making my four and a half years in the city filled with laughter, food and drink. I give the same thanks to the Sussex University Mountaineering Club: Callan Jobson, George Allen, Dan Harrison, and Samuel Colossimo. You provided constant entertainment, laughter and gave me a hobby I hope to keep for the coming decades. Lastly, I want to thank my family for their consistent support. It is a shame that my father is not alive to see me hand in this project, due to the personal interest and advice he gave me during the first half of my PhD. I would like to thank my siblings for understanding that PhD researchers are generally pretty hard up, and so offering to pay for the drinks when coming to see me. I would lastly like to thank my mother Alison Cahn. Using her experience as an editor, she gave me constant advice and feedback on how to improve the flow and clarity of my work, and sacrificed her time to make sure I stayed on track. I love you mum, and couldn’t have done it without you. 4 Thesis Summary University of Sussex Daniel Wigmore-Shepherd A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography The Political Carousel: Elite Power-sharing, Political Instability and the Allocation of Senior Government Posts in Africa This research project examines how various political events and factors influence the composition of senior government elites in a range of African states. Using a newly created dataset of African cabinet ministers, this thesis creates a number of metrics to measure elite volatility and ethnic, regional and political representation. These metrics are used to assess leader and regime strategies of elite power- sharing. It then employs a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how factors such as ethnic demography, regime strength, economic performance, opposition cohesion and popular unrest influence these metrics. Through this process the thesis aims to demonstrate how the distribution of political power within a state can be estimated by allocation and reshuffling of cabinet ministers. This research project contributes a number of key findings. Firstly, most regimes represent the majority relevant subnational groups within the senior government, but that representation is unbalanced with certain groups being overrepresented and others underrepresented. Secondly, these imbalances and variation in which groups are favoured provide information on the distribution of political power. Thirdly, that different political environments lend themselves to different compositions in the senior government and different strategies of elite power-sharing. In the same vein, individual political events which alter the balance of power are accompanied with corresponding changes in senior government which reflect these shifts in the political hierarchy. These findings contribute to the debates on the determinants of African political power distributions, elite designations and processes, formal vs informal institutions and the political survival literature. A broad benefit of this work is to demonstrate the variance in power sharing arrangements across the African continent. Furthermore, this project demonstrates that external events change leader and elite calculations, which in turn changes strategies of power sharing. 5 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Motivation and Context of the Research Project .......................................................................... 9 1.2 Ongoing Debates and Gaps in Existing Research ....................................................................... 10 1.3 Chapters of Research Project ...................................................................................................... 12 1.3.1 Literature Review ................................................................................................................. 12 1.3.2 Introduction to African Cabinet Political Elite Dataset (ACPED) ....................................... 12 1.3.3 Ethnic Arithmetic or Political Calculus? Representation and Accommodation in African Cabinets (joint paper with Professor Clionadh Raleigh) ............................................................... 12 1.3.4 Economic Performance, the Pre-Electoral Period and Cabinet Volatility ........................... 13 1.3.5 Regime Strength, Opposition Unity and Post-Electoral Elite Bargains ............................... 15 1.3.6 Crisis Cabinets and the Influence of Protests on Elite Volatility in Africa (joint paper with Andrea Carboni) ............................................................................................................................ 16 1.3.7 Inclusion, Volatility and Political Violence across African Regimes (joint paper with Professor Clionadh Raleigh, Dr Hyun-Jin Choi and Dr Giuseppe Maggio) ................................. 17 2.0 Literature Review ......................................................................................................................... 19 2.1 Political survival ......................................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Patronage, personal networks and the African state ................................................................... 21 2.3 The role of ethnicity and subnational identities .......................................................................... 22 2.4 Balancing elite interests, sharing power and security ................................................................. 25 2.5 Political context, political change and elite power-sharing strategies ........................................ 28 3.0 Methodology and Data: the African Cabinet Political Elite Dataset (ACPED) ...................... 31 3.1 Information Included in ACPED ................................................................................................ 31 3.1.1 Name .................................................................................................................................... 31 3.1.2 Gender .................................................................................................................................. 31 3.1.3 Position ................................................................................................................................ 32 3.1.4 Political Affiliation .............................................................................................................. 32 3.1.5 Ethnicity and Politically-Relevant Ethnicity ........................................................................ 32 3.1.6 Regional Background and Administrative Divisions ........................................................... 33 3.1.7 Change ................................................................................................................................. 34 3.2 Collection Process ....................................................................................................................... 36 3.3 Created Metrics ..........................................................................................................................