Does Ethnicity Determine Support for the Governing Party?
Author InfoNorris, Pippa (Harvard U) Mattes, Robert (U of Cape Town) Abstract Structural theories predict that the cues of social identity, particularly ethnicity, should exert a strong influence upon voting choices and party support in developing societies with low levels of education and minimal access to the news media. To explore these issues, this study seeks to analyze the influence of ethno-linguistic and ethno-racial characteristics on identification with the governing party in a dozen African states. Ethnicity is compared with other structural and attitudinal factors commonly used to explain patterns of partisanship in many countries. The study draws upon the first round of the Afrobarometer, a cross-national representative survey of political and social values conducted in 1999-2001 in twelve nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from Botswana to Zimbabwe. We establish three main findings. (i) Even with social and attitudinal controls, ethnicity is a significant predictor of
