3.1.1 Name
This column shows the minister’s name.
3.1.2 Gender
This column shows a binary variable which is assigned 0 if the minister is male and 1 if the minister is female.
15 DRC is currently excluded from most analyses in the research project due to many ministers missing relevant information.
3.1.3 Position
This column shows the post in the cabinet occupied by the individual minister for each country by month. ACPED also separates positions into ‘inner circle’ and ‘outer circle’ based on their
importance. This enables users to evaluate whether ethnic/regional/political inclusion extends to the posts that hold significant administrative power (Lindemann, 2011a; Francois et al., 2015). Posts determined to be part of the inner circle typically involve control over the security forces, control over the state’s revenue or sources of revenue and the implementation of law. As a result, the following posts are typically perceived to be part of the inner circle: vice-president or prime minister, finance, foreign affairs, justice, defence, internal security/home affairs and oil/mineral resources (if the country is a major exporter). Outer circle posts are generally more concerned with service delivery or cultural issues such as education, labour, agriculture or culture/heritage.
3.1.4 Political Affiliation
A minister’s political affiliation is defined by their membership of a political party. If the minister belongs to a party or an electoral coalition (such as the Jubilee Coalition in Kenya or the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace in Ivory Coast), the party is coded as their political affiliation. Exceptions to this rule are:
Military figures who are not explicit members of any party. These are simply coded as
‘Military’.
Politicians who have stood for elected office but not on any party ticket are coded as
‘Independent’.
Individuals unaligned with any party and who were previously employed outside the realm of politics (such as business, international institutions or academia) are coded as ‘Civil Society’.
Members of rebel groups who either seize the government or are integrated into the
government without forming registered parties are coded according to the name of their rebel group.
The format used is the acronym of the party/coalition/group in the original language with an English translation. So the Front Populaire Ivoirien becomes the FPI: Ivorian Popular Front.
3.1.5 Ethnicity and Politically-Relevant Ethnicity
A minister’s ethnicity identity is separated into two categories, ethnicity and politically relevant ethnic group. The concept of ethnicity is subject to a lot of academic criticism and debate. Though formerly interpreted as hard unchanging categories, ethnic groups are now generally interpreted as fluid categories whose boundaries soften and harden with political events (Geertz, 1963; Eriksen, 2001;
Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Brubaker, 2002). Furthermore, ethnic categories are often multi-level with supposed ‘ethnic groups’ consisting of multiple subgroups which can act as a single unit or fracture depending on context (Posner, 2004a; Brubaker, 2002). For example, the Fulani of Nigeria can be further subdivided into Wodaabe and Fulani associated with the historical caliphates of Kano and Sakoto (Scarritt and Mozaffar, 1999). The Dinka and Nuer of South Sudan can be further divided into sub-clans which are sometimes at political odds or in outright conflict with each other (Pendle, 2014).
To deal with these issues, ethnic identity is separated into two categories: Ethnicity and Politically-Relevant Ethnicity. The former refers to the most detailed information we can get on the minister’s ethno-linguistic identity. This means that the Ethnicity category can often include very small linguistic groups, sub-groups or dialects. This information is identified by self-declaration, in-country expert opinion and subnational media sources. The second category concerns which politicised ethnic bloc the minister belongs to. Often multiple ethnic groups act in concert and adopt a single identity in order to leverage their position within the political hierarchy. Examples include the ‘Kalenjin’ category which includes several groups indigenous to the Rift Valley, or the Chewa and Tumbuka who group themselves under ‘Easterners’ or ‘Nyanja’ in Zambia but retain their own labels in political competition in Malawi (Posner, 2004b).
Politically relevant groups must be relevant in national politics (as opposed to localised politics).
National political relevance can derive from how ethnicity guides voting practices, the formation of factions within the regime or the political rhetoric of regime and opposition elites. Multiple sources link a minister’s stated identity to a relevant domestic ethno-political identity group. An ethnic and regional macro-roster for each state is composed from several relevant sources including national experts, the Scarritt and Mozaffar’s list (1999), Ethnologue, Ethnic Power Relations and Francois, Trebbi and Rainer lists. National expert opinion is privileged if a discrepancy between source materials arises. A breakdown of primary influence or sources in guiding the categorisation of politically relevant ethnic groups is provided in the appendix.16
3.1.6 Regional Background and Administrative Divisions
Ethnicity is the most common proxy for what Posner (2004b) terms ‘interest group polarization’.
However, regional background is increasingly perceived as another relevant identity in guiding political conflict, coalition formation and the distribution of resources (Østby, 2008; Holder and Raschky, 2014). As with ethnicity, the salience of the relevant identity is frequently dependent on the size of the political goal (Posner, 2004b; Posner, 2007). When competing for local office, elites choose to capitalise on more exclusive identities such as clan or subgroup, but may mobilise a larger
16 See appendix table 1 for breakdown of groups and populations. Appendix passage 1 and appendix table 2 outline sources/methods used to create macro-groups.
and more inclusive identity bloc when competing in national politics (Posner, 2004b; Carrier et al., 2014).
In some cases, regional identities may be a more expedient identity for elites to use when seeking to build or mobilise their constituencies: diverse African states - such as pre-partition Sudan, Nigeria and Ivory Coast - have been split by political conflicts pitching ‘northerners’ against ‘southerners’. The importance of region as a source of mobilisation is demonstrated by the fact that most parties banned in Sub-Saharan Africa for promoting a particularistic agenda have been regionalist parties (Bogaards et al., 2010).
ACPED uses each country’s primary administrative subdivision to determine the country’s regional categories. Each minister is then applied a regional category based on the administrative subdivision of their birth. Exceptions to this are cases where a minister who was born abroad or in the capital is perceived to come from the region of their parents, in which case ACPED codes their perceived or inherited region rather than their birth region as their background. These cases only occur at the recommendation of local experts.
Administrative divisions are used for several reasons. Firstly, administrative units provide solid boundaries which are easy to categorise compared to imprecise terms such as ‘north’ or ‘south’.
Secondly, subnational administrative divisions are engaged in a direct financial relationship with the central government, acting as direct contributors to and beneficiaries from the state’s resources. As a result constituents and representatives from the same region are likely to have aligned interests in terms of resource allocation and development projects (Ukiwo, 2003; Gudina, 2007; Osei and Malang, 2016).
Administrative divisions can be subject to change, as shown by Kenya’s replacement of the old provincial system with the 47 counties in 2010 or the continued redistricting in Uganda or South Sudan. ACPED aims to apply each state’s most recent administrative division categorisation. ACPED also provides each minister’s secondary administrative division of birth (coded as admin2) for a large number, but not all, countries included in the ACPED data. This extra level of information is currently provided for Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.
3.1.7 Change
The change column shows whether each individual minister’s position in the cabinet was subject to change.
Table 3.1 – ACPED Variable Details
Change Category Explanation
Start This category is applied to the first cabinet for each country in the data. For all countries except South Sudan, the starting ministers are those who were in the cabinet in December 1996.
Remains Refers to a cabinet minister retaining his or her position for that particular month. The vast majority of observations, 93.7%, consist of ministers retaining their position.
Reshuffle Refers to a cabinet minister being shifted from heading one ministry to another. This category can also apply to a minister retaining their previous post but being assigned additional responsibility, either through the merging of ministries or through becoming the acting minister of an additional ministry.
New Refers to a new appointment to the executive arm of government.
If someone is appointed from a lower level of government (e.g.
deputy minister, MP, etc.) this is still a new appointment. If a minister resigns, is dismissed or dropped from the cabinet, upon his or her return, s/he is always coded as New, no matter how brief the interim period has been.
Dismissed Refers to a minister being dropped from the cabinet during a reshuffle, reappointed to a non-ministerial position or overtly fired from office.
Dismissed (Arrested) Applied when a minister’s dismissal is accompanied by his or her arrest.
Resigns Refers to a minister voluntarily leaving their position of their own volition.
Deceased Refers to a minister leaving government due to death, both natural and unnatural causes.
Suspended Refers to a minister being temporarily removed from his or her duties without an overt statement that this state of affairs is permanent. If the government later decides to turn the suspension into a permanent dismissal, then the minister in question is later coded as dismissed.
Returns Refers to a minister who has been suspended (not dismissed) resuming his or her position.
Removed This category only applies to leaders or co-leaders (Presidents, Commanders in Chief, de facto rulers, Vice-Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc.) who are removed from their position by force (e.g.
military coup, foreign intervention, insurgency or popular uprising).