Fall 2017 JPI

CONCLUSION
Overall, the findings of this paper provide some insight to this question that scholars have
been debating. The major insight here is that it is likely not appropriate to make sweeping claims about
the effect of ethnopolitical fragmentation in all African countries, but we should instead recognize
that the effects are contingent on other aspects of each electoral system. While MSG did scratch the
surface on these joint effects, they failed to make accurate statements due to some flaws in their model.
With the helpful corrections in the model from GBC and the newer data narrowed down to strictly
democratic elections in Africa, we can start to extrapolate these findings to the idea of stability for
democracies in Africa. What are the implications?
First, I can consider the reasons behind why we might have found these numbers. In light of
these findings, there actually does seem to be some logic in MSG’s original theory, recalling that when
levels of ethnic fragmentation are high enough, it is in the parties’ best interests to cooperate in order
to reach a multiethnic base. However, since Africa’s ethnic groups tend to be highly fragmented and
highly geographically concentrated, when the district magnitude is small it is possible that each district
will be comprised of a small number of ethnic groups. This allows for the formation of intragroup
cleavages to take over, and results in a high number of political parties. On the other hand, when
district magnitude is large, there will likely be such a multitude of ethnic groups in a given district that
MSG’s theory would be plausible and multiethnic coalitions would be a more beneficial strategy for
the parties involved.
Second, the idea that ethnopolitical fragmentation can correlate with less political parties under
certain conditions, does imply that the stability of African democracies is possible. Finally, this
research raises yet more questions to be studied in the future to clarify this relationship as studies have
yet to control for other important variables, such as the type of electoral system in these countries that
would have a significant effect on these relationships. For instance, in the case of small district
magnitude and high fragmentation and concentration mentioned above, in a proportional
representation system it would be much more likely to observe the results that I speculated. Whereas
in a majoritarian system, it would be more likely to observe one or two parties capitalize on that small
number of ethnic groups within a district to maximize votes. The interaction that I found gives way
to crucial, but incomplete insights for the possible link between Africa’s emerging democracies and its
unique ethnic composition.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 64