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Paper short abstract:

How do elites respond to autocrats´ protest management tactics? Leveraging a survey experiment administered to Ugandan elites, we find that regime insiders are most likely to support the use of violence and accusatory rhetoric, regardless of the protest’s cause. Outsiders divide depending on cause.

Paper long abstract:

Mass protests can threaten autocratic regimes by signaling an incumbent´s declining legitimacy and potential weakness. While incumbents typically respond in ways intended to shore up support to maintain themselves in power, it remains unknown how other elites — regime insiders and opposition outsiders — respond to an incumbent’s co-optation versus repression efforts. Extending prior related scholarship on authoritarianism, we argue that opposition outsiders are often unable to capitalize politically on mass protests because they are often divided in how to appropriately respond to unrest, whether due to economic or political conditions. Regime insiders, by contrast, consistently rally behind the incumbent response, regardless of the use of violence. To examine how elites respond to an incumbent’s protest management, we randomly expose Uganda’s elite class of top-level bureaucrats, business leaders, members of parliament, and civil society leaders to news radio segments depicting protests scenes in an African capital. In these news segments, we experimentally manipulate both the reason for the protests (electoral fraud versus cost-of-living hikes) and the incumbent´s response (repression, co-optation, and accusatory rhetoric). We find that regime insiders, proxied by party affiliation, are most likely to support the use of violence and accusatory rhetoric, regardless of the protest’s cause. This contrasts with opposition outsiders, who generally favour the use of dialogue to resolve protest. This group, however, divides on the support for incumbent repression depending on the protest’s cause. These findings have implications for how we understand the role that elites play in the maintenance of Africa’s autocratic regimes.

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Paper short abstract:

This article discusses the development of philanthropy in Africa since the 1990s to reflect on the transformations of economic elites. We analyse the relations philanthropists create with their beneficiaries, states, societies and individuals and how this shapes networks of governance.

Paper long abstract:

This article analyses the development of philanthropy in Africa since the 1990s to reflect on the transformations of economic elites and big man politics. Until now the literature has focused on the cultural specificity and essence of philanthropy on the continent. We move away from this paradigm to discuss the practices of economic elites and of their foundations. Using publicly available data and a large number of interviews, Our approach and method focuses on the relations philanthropists create with their beneficiaries, states, societies and individuals. Our argument is that these practices are shaping three types of networks of governance which do not "invest" in African societies in the same way and do not rely on the same political economy. A first type of big men engages in charity to become intermediary of the government and political parties they rely on. A second type of economic elites invest wealth through grants and programs that benefit civil society actors to produce political norms from the outside of the state, with the support of international organisations. We highlight the advent of a third type of elites that mostly comes from the banking and advisory industry. It refuses to engage in charity and claim to invest in entrepreneurs and companies to counterbalance the effects of “bad” leadership and corruption. Yet, these elites work in partnership with the US, European countries and China to Africanize financial capital flows which they channel directly to the new political communities and visions of development they shape.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper identifies four strategies of control employed by the post-conflict government in Côte d'Ivoire to tame the threat of former armed actors: organizational reform, co-optation, purging and spheres of influence. It argues that strategies have evolved over time in response changing contexts.

Paper long abstract:

How do civilian rulers tame the threat posed by ex-rebel leaders after transitions to peace? Existing scholarship emphasizes that because ex-rebel leaders retain access to material resources and command over wartime military networks, these actors are well positioned to either broker or thwart efforts at state consolidation. Little is known, however, about the different strategies employed by ruling civilian regimes in post-conflict states to exert control over the military leaders of former armed groups. Drawing on the case of post-conflict Cote d'Ivoire, we identify four strategies of control employed by civilian rulers to tame the threat of former armed actors and build a resilient regime. These strategies of control include: 1) organizational reforms to the security sector that disrupt ex-rebel leaders' military networks, 2) co-optation of ex-rebel leaders and their existing networks into the state apparatus, 3) purging of ex-rebel leaders to remove them from the political scene, and 4) tolerating ex-rebel authority within segmented spheres of influence. Each strategy entails distinct political and material costs for civilian rulers, and different strategies may be employed in response to changing domestic and international contexts. We argue that the ability of the government of Alassane Ouattara to flexibly employ these strategies of control against former leaders of the Forces Nouvelles (FN) rebel group helps to account for the surprising resilience of Ouattara's regime and the recent emergence of electoral autocracy in Côte d'Ivoire.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper links Niger and Tunisia's bargaining power vis-à-vis the EU to the ability of their political elites to achieve internal consensus on foreign policy choices. The hypothesis is that the more stable government in Niamey has benefited more than Tunis from the relationship with the EU.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates patterns of elite formation, resistance and disruption in Tunisia and Niger, and analyses their impact on the foreign policy choices adopted vis-à-vis the EU. Since 2011 Niger and Tunisia have been faced with persisting crises linked to security, governance, and migration. This “geopolitical" condition made both countries absolutely crucial to the new EU foreign policy strategy. The latter is indeed based on bargaining material and immaterial benefits with neighbouring countries in exchange for the adoption of more restrictive security and mobility policies on their part.

While most studies in the field of EU-Africa relations have focused on EU externalisation policies, on the one hand, or the extraversion and the cooptation of African elites, on the other, I offer a more dynamic and relational bargaining perspective which pays attention both to the internal and the external implications of foreign policy conduct. The hypothesis that will be explored is that Niger, as opposed to Tunisia, has managed to improve its position vis-à-vis the EU due to its more stable political situation. In Niger the solid PNDS-Tarayya party firmly controls most branches of power and hence the elites have been very able to reach wide internal consensus over policy choices. Conversely in Tunisia, after the radical changements following the revolution, the persisting fragmentation of the political landscape allowed the EU to interfere more heavily with Tunis’ political priorities and agenda.

The qualitative data analysis is based on elite interviews, as well as archival resources, examined through process tracing methods.

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Paper short abstract:

How do changes among national level political elites affect everyday politics? This paper explores the question through an in-depth case study of the construction sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The paper draws on six months of fieldwork, including formal interviews and participant observation.

Paper long abstract:

How do changes among national level political elites affect everyday politics? This paper explores the question through an in-depth case study of the construction sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

After years of anti-government protests, Ethiopia's ruling coalition was forced in 2018 to adopt wide-ranging political reforms. This has included major changes among political elites, as well as a renegotiation of the elite pact, de facto determining the rules of the game for politics, the economy and social interactions more broadly. The new civilian government enjoyed broad support and was perceived as legitimate by a large proportion of the Ethiopian society. While initially there existed high hopes for a transition towards more democratic rule, the exacerbation of ethnic and other forms of communal conflicts, the outbreak of a civil war between the federal government and the regional government in Tigray, decreasing state capacity to implement proposed reforms and an increase in corruption have tempered expectations. Hybrid at best, authoritarian at worst, the ruling government in Ethiopia has struggled due to lack of cohesion among elites, erosion of central power, decentralisation of rent extraction and rent distribution and lack of clear ideological underpinnings. Taking the construction sector in Ethiopia's capital as an entry point, the paper explores how the fragile and fragmented nature of the elite pact affects state - business relations, determines access to and prices of materials and directly shapes the formal and informal rules and institutions governing the sector. The paper draws on six months of fieldwork.