Spatial Inequalities in African Political Economy

How do inequalities across subnational regions within African countries shape patterns of conflict, competition, and political mobilization? Is ethnic identity the only driver of political competition and division in African societies, as much journalistic work, and even much work in political science, would suggests? So far, these questions have been difficult to answer because scholars have lacked the kind of subnational, micro-level, and local institutional data that is needed to test hypotheses about the connection between regional and local socio-economic inequalities, on the one hand, and local, regional, and national patterns of political competition, on the other hand. The main objective of this project is to develop the theory and data needed to solve this analytic and policy problem. Based on our earlier research and the results of our LSE-funded pilot study, our objective is to show that there are economic, socio-economic and institutional drivers of regionalized competition that have been systematically overlooked in policy and social-scientific understandings of political competition and conflict in Africa. Our results should shift scholars' and policy-makers' attention away from simplistic analyses that overemphasize political identity (ethnicity) as a driver of politics, and toward factors amendable to policy and administrative reforms -- institutions and regional inequalities -- as drivers of competition and conflict.

Lack of data and theory about the political effects of regional inequalities in sub-Saharan African countries persists in spite of the fact that many scholars recognize that African countries are characterized by extreme disparities across subnational regions (Brown and Langer 2009). This gap is costly for scholars, policy makers, and citizens alike: social scientists know that very high levels of spatial or "horizontal" inequality are correlated with socio-political ills that hit African countries hard. These include the underprovision of public goods, deep social cleavages, the prominence of political grievances around inequality and exclusion, and civil conflict (Stewart 2000).

The PI and interdisciplinary research team are uniquely positioned to combine new data and analytic techniques with deep substantive expertise in the political economy of regional and territorial dynamics in African countries. We break new ground in the study of African politics by using spatial data to reveal the dynamics regionalism, uneven economic development, and territorial inequalities that drive political coalition-building, group mobilization, and partisan and factional rivalries over fundamental policy choices. There is no equivalent or precedent for this kind of work in the fields of social science that we represent: political science, geography, economic history, and development studies. We believe that our research will chart-out new research agendas for the study of African spatial inequalities across all these fields.

Our research outputs -- approximately 6-8 open-access journal length articles in high-impact venues, publicly-available replication data sets for all our published work, open-access policy reports and LSE working papers, blog posts and podcasts, Year 3 conferences hosted by the LSE Africa Centre in London and the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Nairobi with presenters and discussants from the academic and policy communities, and a university press book by Boone (2 years after the end of the project) -- will open new scholarly frontiers in understanding of territorial dynamics underlying political coalitions and political competition in African countries.

This project is impactful in two ways. First, there is academic impact which is described above. Academic impact will be realized in a stream of academic and general-audience publications, working papers, and conference presentations. Each research stream will generate 1 article manuscript during the 3-year project period for submission to high-impact disciplinary and interdisciplinary social science journals, in addition to 1 policy-oriented report, 1 LSE International Inequalities Institute Working paper or LSE International Development Working Paper, at least one LSE Africa center blog post or podcast, and one or two presentations at international conferences. The planned journal output is as follows. Stream 1 on regional coalitions: co-authors Boone, Wahman, and Linke will submit to Comparative Politics Studies and Political Geography; Stream 2 on internal borders: papers by Boone, Gardner, and Linke, for World Politics and J. of African Economic History); Stream 3 on preferences for titling: Boone and Linke will co-author for Political Geography and African Affairs; and Stream 4 on settlement schemes: co-authors Boone and Lukalo will aim at World Politics and Journal of Modern African Studies. After the end of the 3-year project period, we anticipate approximately 3 additional journal article manuscripts. In addition, Boone will author a book manuscript on the geopolitics of regional inequality in Africa that will be submitted to one of the leading university presses (Cambridge, Princeton, or Oxford).

Second, each research stream has policy implications. The "regional inequality and partisan competition stream" identifies a partisan coalition lock-in effect that favors economically-dominant regions. It suggests that better policy outcomes may require institutional solutions that enhance the effective representation of marginalized regions in national legislatures, rather than rhetorical shifts to downplay ethnicity or amplify national policy appeals. The "internal borders" research stream suggests that boundaries around micro-regions that are inherited from colonial rule also work to lock-in economic and political disadvantage. Policy remedies may lie in measures that enhance inter-jurisdictional mobility and that aggregate existing jurisdictions (as opposed to the existing preference for subnational unit fragmentation). The "regional inequality and competing policy preferences" stream provides evidence that the costs and risks of major policy initiatives are likely to be distributed highly unevenly across subnational regions, as well as plausible evidence that partisan politics around these policies cleaves along regional lines in the predicted ways. The expected results will provide the basis for better understanding the costs and risks of policy, both political and economic. In the land policy area, findings may support policy recommendations in favor of regionally-specific land titling measures (bucking the default preference for national policy uniformity). The fourth research stream, the "Settlement schemes and land allocation" stream, will bring together strands of the foregoing to underscore the variable ways in which land is an economic and political resource that rulers can use to mitigate territorial inequalities, build partisan coalitions, and pursue development policies. There are stark policy implications (warning signals) for current donor-funded government policies in Kenya which aim to speed-up resettlement, link project schedules to the timing of national elections, and choose settlement locations according to ruling party constituency-building needs. Donors that fall into overly technocratic modes of problem-solving may miss these connections, and may thus be unprepared for the political ramifications and fall-out. Dissemination plans are sketched out in the project summary (above) and Pathways to Impact document.