Few social phenomena have been more central to the study of African politics than ethnicity — identity based on shared descent. Ethnicity has been found to structure allocation of public services, armed conflict, voting, and a host of political and economic outcomes. At the same time, important cross-national and subnational variation exists in the salience of ethnicity. In some settings, ethnicity exerts a weak effect on political mobilization. What accounts for this variation in the politicization of ethnicity? This critical question has been largely understudied in the fields of comparative and African politics. In Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa, Dominika Koter breaks important new ground in addressing this question by advancing an elegant socio-structural theory of ethnic mobilization. Empirically, however, it is difficult to disentangle the mediating effects of groups’ social structure on electoral strategies versus the path-dependent effects of colonialism that Koter shows also played an important role in the organizational structures of various groups.

Koter studies the phenomenon of ethnic politicization through the lens of ethnic voting — that is, the degree to which ethnic identity is a good predictor of vote choice. The starting point is that clientelism dominates in countries in which politics tends to be non-programmatic (i.e., policy salience has a weak influence on voting behavior). Resources tend to be privately distributed to constituents in exchange for political support. In such institutional environments, that is, those in which public goods are undersupplied, citizens seek to align with politicians who can deliver access to scarce resources. Clientelism confronts politicians with challenges of its own, however. It, too, is costly: it requires monitoring and oversight, and it necessitates effective delivery systems. Koter posits that the strategies politicians pursue to overcome these challenges have important implications for the politicization of ethnicity. Where politicians are able to strike alliances with powerful intermediaries embedded in hierarchical social structures, they can better absorb the administrative and monitoring costs that come with clientelist practices. In contrast, in the absence of such authority structures — and facing higher administrative and monitoring costs — politicians eschew what might be called retail clientelism and shift to ethnic clientelism, thereby relying on direct appeals to co-ethnics to mobilize political support. Following this logic, Koter argues, we would expect a group's social structure — that is, a group's hierarchical ties managed by strong local leaders who control resources and command authority — to have a significant mediating effect on the electoral strategy politicians choose and the emergence of ethnic politicization. Where such social structures do not exist, direct mobilization of ethnic groups is expected to arise and persist.

To test this argument, Koter marshals an array of empirical evidence. The main test is a structured historical comparison of Benin and Senegal based on interviews with politicians and political experts in both countries, disaggregated electoral data, and various secondary sources. Chapter Three establishes that at the time of independence in Senegal, but not in Benin, local authority structures were strong and lent themselves to retail clientelism. In Benin, conversely, local authority structures were weak at independence, in part because French colonizers had emasculated the authority of traditional leaders. Chapter Four then demonstrates — consistent with the book's central argument — that in Senegal, politicians have generally mobilized voters through traditional and religious leaders and tended to eschew broad ethnic-based mobilization, leading to more ethnically diverse electorates. The opposite pattern holds for Benin. Direct ethnic mobilization has been the dominant mode of electoral outreach in that country. In fact, contemporary Beninese politicians had trouble even grasping the question of whether they would countenance using election intermediaries, such as religious or traditional authorities, because it seemed so foreign to them (90).

The structured comparison between Senegal and Benin thus convincingly shows that the modes of electoral mobilization are different in the two countries and that this process contributes to the politicization or de-politicization of ethnicity. However, one question that jumps out from these cases is the potential confounding effect of the religious basis of authority structures. (In Senegal, the election intermediaries are religious authorities.) The qualitative evidence suggests this cross-cutting institution seems to play an important role in dampening ethnic mobilization. It is surprising this important alternative explanation is not directly addressed.

The latter chapters of the book then provide additional, albeit thinner, structured comparisons of cases with different underlying social structures and contemporary levels of ethnic politicization: Guinea and Kenya (both with weak traditional authorities and more-ethnicized elections) versus Mali and Botswana (both with strong traditional authorities and less-ethnicized elections). Chapter Five explores another important implication of the model: while strong local authority structures may mitigate against the politicization of ethnicity, they may also reduce democratic accountability, as election intermediaries fall in line with the highest bidder, who tends to be the incumbent politician. This dynamic is purported to account for the dominance of incumbents in rural areas in Senegal.

Koter's book is part of a larger recent turn in the study of African politics and development to seriously consider the role that historically-rooted social organizations play in shaping contemporary outcomes. One of the gaps in the literature, however, is that the pathways are under-specified. Koter's contribution is that she presents a model that more fully explicates how that persistence operates — showing precisely how underlying social structures shape the electoral strategies that politicians pursue, which in turn lead to different electoral coalitions.

The Achilles heel of this approach is that it does not explain why certain social structures emerge and persist — and whether the factors that shape these ‘underlying’ social structures also explain contemporary political mobilization. Koter makes a very strong claim of exogeneity on the emergence of hierarchical and nonhierarchical organizations during the precolonial period (43). However, research by James Fenske and others points to the trade origins of centralization.Footnote ¹

A thornier issue is that her social structure measures are drawn from the late colonial period and not from the time period before the onset of colonialism. And as Koter explains, colonialism exerted a significant impact on the social and political organizations of groups. However, this impact was not random. Among other factors, the disruption of authority structures likely occurred with greater intensity in areas of ‘prime economic or strategic concern’ where the colonial state was strongest (44). This points to a rival historical source of ethnic politicization — colonial state penetration — that aligns with weak traditional authority structures.

In the face of such confounding variables, the weapon at the disposal of the qualitative researcher is process-tracing — not just to carefully analyze one's own hypothesis, but to systemically address and falsify rival explanations as well. Koter provides ample evidence that different organizational structures produce different modes of political mobilization with distinct social bases of electoral coalitions. But the institutional and structural impact of colonialism on ethnic politicization and mobilization is neither addressed nor refuted in the case studies.

Overall, Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa elevates the importance of social structure in the study of electoral and ethnic politics. Yet it leaves open the question of the causal impact of these social structures versus the powerful historical forces that produced them. This sets a clear research agenda for readers of this journal and other scholars to pursue.