How leaders balance the interests of competing political identities and elites is key to ensuring their survival. In the absence of strong institutions, strategies of winning coalition formation and power-sharing are guided by concerns over security and political survival (Roessler and Ohls, 2018). Leaders are under pressure to balance the competing threats of external elites, who can oust or force
concessions from the regime, and their nominal coalition allies, who can launch a coup from within the regime. Roessler describes this dynamic as the coup/civil war trade-off (Roessler and Ohls, 2018;
Roessler, 2011).
In many contemporary African states, leaders are not only threatened by external elites engaging in armed rebellion. Since the widespread adoption of multiparty elections in the early 1990s, elites outside of the leader’s ruling coalition can attempt to gain power through electoral competition. Many long-term leaders and regimes lost power in their country’s founding election.3 Between 1990 and 2017 approximately 40 percent of elections have resulted in a new leader taking power (Brookings Institute, 2015).4 This threat is not spread equally throughout the continent. Appendix figure 1 shows that though leader and ruling party tenure are generally lower in 2017 than in 1990, many leaders5 and ruling parties6 have managed to survive the adoption of regular elections and hold onto power.
Leaders also face non-democratic threats from external forces including protests7 and external interventions.8
Though coups have continued to constitute a real threat in the multiparty era, with 25 coups taking place since 1990 (Brookings Institute, 2015), leaders also face multiple other internal threats such as formal leadership selection mechanisms, opposing factions within the regime or rebellious successors.
Thabo Mbeki of South Africa was ousted by the decision of the ANC’s National Executive
Committee to withdraw support. Ian Khama was repeatedly challenged by factional rivals within the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which undercut Khama’s popularity and led to the formation of the splinter Botswana Movement for Democracy (Makgalaand and Mac Giollabhuí, 2014). Jose dos Santos, president of Angola for 38 years, ceded power to his nominated successor Joao Loureco.
Lourenco has subsequently cancelled government contracts with companies linked to Dos Santos and arrested Dos Santos’ son (Cascais, 2018).
Though political power in African regimes is assumed to be concentrated within the presidency, there have been many cases of leaders being constrained by other government elites. For example, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Frederick Chiluba of Zambia attempted to amend the constitution to extend their tenure but were blocked by parliament (including many MPs from the ruling party) (Posner and Young, 2007).
3 Examples include Benin in 1991, Cape Verde in 1991, Malawi in 1994, and Zambia in 1991 (Cheeseman, 2010)
4 Over two thirds of these transitions occurred in an open poll where the incumbent was not competing, and ten percent of these changes in leadership were direct successions where the regime’s favoured successor became leader (Brookings Institute, 2015).
5 The following leaders have been in office since the 1990s or earlier: Paul Biya of Cameroon, Idriss Deby of Chad, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
6 The following countries have had the same party in power since the 1990s or earlier, although the leaders have changed: Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
7 Which recently forced out Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Abdelazziz Boutaflika of Algeria.
8 Which expelled Johnny Paul Koroma of Sierra Leone, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast and Yayeh Jammeh of Gambia.
Leaders need to create coalitions that minimise both types of threat and create a coalition of elites which is resilient to external threats, while ensuring none of the coalition partners has the power or motivation to seize power. The existing literature argues that large and inclusive coalitions are an effective means of mitigating external threats such as protest, democratic opposition or insurgency, as these are motivated by elites who have been deprived of the benefits of state largesse (Choi and Kim, 2018; Bratton and Van de Walle, 1992; Roessler, 2011). Exclusive ruling coalitions can foster civil wars in which excluded groups and their representatives try to depose the incumbent or force their inclusion in the ruling coalition via a negotiated settlement (Mehler, 2011; Buhaug et al., 2008;
Wimmer et al., 2009; De Waal, 2009). In terms of non-violent competition, leaders generally need to draw on support from outside their own communities to remain electorally viable and keep the opposition from forming inclusive multi-ethnic coalitions of their own (Arriola, 2013; Wahman, 2013; Fearon and Laitin, 2003). This will likely necessitate a large and inclusive coalition of elites (Arriola, 2011; Ash, 2015).
However, there are arguments that larger coalitions can endanger incumbent survival through making leaders more vulnerable to rivals from within the ruling coalition. Increasing the size of the ruling coalition limits the amount of spoils available to existing coalition members (De Mesquita et al., 2005). Continually expanding the coalition can encourage existing members to oust the incumbent in order to create a narrow coalition in which all members are better compensated (Choi and Kim, 2018).9 Inclusive coalitions can pose internal risks to the incumbent through the inclusion of
potentially disloyal groups who may be tempted to usurp power from within (Roessler, 2011). Lastly, sharing power with ethnic groups with a history of antagonism with the regime can incentivise co-ethnic hardliners to compete with or replace the incumbent rather than face sharing power with other groups (Sriram and Zahar, 2009).10
The contradictory arguments on effective elite power-sharing strategies may be due the gaps in the literature on elite power-sharing and political survival strategies in Africa. Though many studies examine the various threats facing African leaders and regimes, there are comparatively few studies looking at how African leaders create and alter their coalition of elites to minimise threats. Existing studies examining elite power-sharing typically focus on individual cases – such as Lindeman’s (2011a; 2011b) studies on Zambia and Uganda, Woldense’s (2018) on Ethiopia, and Langer’s (2005) work on Ivory Coast – and use the results of the analysis to extrapolate wider relationships at play
9 Arriola (2009) finds that increasing the size of the coalition up to a point actually reduces the chance of a coup.
However, the effect dampens as the coalition expands and eventually expanding the coalition increases the chance of deposition from within.
10 Notable examples of outbidding include Islamist and northern opposition to Gaafar Nimeiry’s inclusion of southerners in the Sudanese government and attempted coups by hardline military Tutsi’s against Pierre Buyoya’s inclusive government in Burundi (Kaufmann, 2006; Southall, 2006). Outside of a military context, President Diouf offered his electoral rival Abdulaye Wade the position of Vice-President, but was blocked by the ruling Socialist Party (Gandhi and Buckles, 2016).
throughout the continent. There are few large-N cross-comparative works11 which match the scope of studies examining the allocation of formal positions and leader survival strategies in other regions.12 The studies do not examine in depth how different political factors can change which elite sharing strategies are most effective. Consequently, arguments over optimal strategies of elite power-sharing persist and the historical variation in strategies shown across Africa remains largely
unexplained in the literature.