Senegal: Presidential elections 2019 - The shining example of democratic transition immersed in muddy power-politics

Whereas Senegal has long been sold as a showcase of democracy in Africa, including peaceful political alternance, things apparently changed fundamentally with the Senegalese presidentials of 2019 that brought new configurations. One of the major issues was political transhumance that has been elevated to the rank of religion in defiance of morality. It threatened political stability and peace. In response, social networks of predominantly young activists, created in 2011 in the aftermath of the Arab Spring focused on grass-roots advocacy with the electorate on good governance and democracy. They proposed a break with a political system that they consider as neo-colonialist. Moreover, Senegal’s justice is frequently accused to be biased, and the servility of the Constitutional Council which is in the first place an electoral court has often been denounced

Replication Data for: Precolonial Legacies and Institutional Congruence in Public Goods Delivery: Evidence from Decentralized West Africa

Scholars have long identified political bias in how African politicians distribute state resources. Though much of this literature focuses on the role of group identities, centrally ethnicity and partisanship, this article shifts focus to local governments, increasingly important players in basic social service provision, to argue that public goods allocation under democratic decentralization is intimately shaped by historical identities. Specifically, I highlight the role of identities rooted in the precolonial past. To explain this, the article articulates a theory of institutional congruence, arguing that greater spatial overlap between formal institutional space and informal social identities improves the ability of elites to overcome local coordination problems. Looking to the West African state of Senegal, I deploy a nested analysis, drawing on interviews with rural Senegalese elites to understand how the precolonial past shapes local politics today via the social identities it left behind. I secondly test the argument with a unique, geocoded dataset of village level public goods investments in the 2000s, finding that areas that were home to precolonial states distribute goods more broadly across space. These patterns cannot be explained by ethnic or electoral dynamics. Finally, two brief case studies of on-the-line cases illuminate how the presence of precolonial identities facilitates local cooperation. The article thus calls into question our ability to treat identities as static over time by highlighting the interactive relationship between institutions and identities while at the same time drawing attention to emerging sub-national variation in local government performance following decentralization reforms across the developing world

The Historic Origins Of Public Goods: Local Distributional Politics In Rural West Africa, 1880-Present

This dissertation examines why some local governments deliver social services more broadly to citizens than others under democratic decentralization, arguing that the divergent politics of local service delivery are explained by variation in pre-colonial statehood. Specifically, differences in pre-colonial political geography left distinct socio-political legacies in the network relations of local elites: local elites are tied together through mutually-reinforcing claims to authority in areas that were home to pre-colonial states, but they are fragmented and contentious in areas that were acephalous. Following widespread decentralization reforms, it is the relative congruence of newly created local government boundaries with local elite networks that drives distributional politics. Greater overlap between these formal and informal institutions widens the webs of obligations that local elites have to citizens in areas of high network congruence while its absence facilitates the emergence of exclusive identities and incentivizes narrow targeting in the rest of the country. This study demonstrates that distinct distributional patterns are emerging by looking at two locally delivered public goods, primary schools and basic health facilities, in Senegal, a West African nation that was home to a dynamic pre-colonial state system. The project blends quantitative and qualitative data collected during a year of fieldwork to illustrate the link between pre-colonial geography and different forms of local distributional politics. These differences, which only emerged following the 1996 decentralization reforms, were a critical juncture for local elites, who gained control over substantial patronage to redistribute locally. The project therefore contributes to the recent 'historical renaissance' among students of political economy of development by making an important distinction between historical antecedents that are path dependent but not persistent when we 'decompress' history. It further contributes to the literature by emphasizing the social incentives facing local elites over the narrow materialist goals often ascribed to them in the clientelism literature and, finally, it calls attention to the vivid political debates that take place within rural communities, posing a series of implicit questions for the current agendas of decentralized governance and bottom-up development

Precolonial Legacies and Institutional Congruence in Public Goods Delivery

Scholars have long identified political bias in the way African politicians distribute state resources. Much of this literature focuses on the role of group identities, mainly ethnicity, and partisanship. This article shifts the focus to local governments, which have become increasingly important players in basic social service provision, and argues that public goods allocation under democratic decentralization is intimately shaped by historical identities. Specifically, the author highlights the role of identities rooted in the precolonial past. To explain this, she articulates a theory of institutional congruence, arguing that greater spatial overlap between formal institutional space and informal social identities improves the ability of elites to overcome local coordination problems. Looking to the West African state of Senegal, the author deploys a nested analysis, drawing on interviews with rural Senegalese elites to understand how the precolonial past shapes local politics today via the social identities it left behind. She also tests the argument with a unique, geocoded data set of village-level public goods investments in the 2000s, finding that areas that were once home to precolonial states distribute goods more broadly across space. These patterns cannot be explained by ethnic or electoral dynamics. Two brief examples from on-the-line cases illuminate how the presence of precolonial identities facilitates local cooperation. The article thus calls into question the tendency to treat identities as static over time, highlighting the interactive relationship between institutions and identities while drawing attention to emerging subnational variation in local government performance following decentralization reforms across the developing world

Enumerator Experiences in Violent Research Environments

Understanding political and social effects of violence in local populations through public opinion surveys has become increasingly common internationally. Yet while researchers are attuned to possible challenges induced during survey implementation, this work focuses almost uniformly on respondents. This paper considers survey enumerators as critical actors for data collection in violent research settings. We present survey results from 245 enumerators in Côte d’Ivoire to show that their personal feelings of insecurity and exposure to violence while conducting surveys may condition challenges faced and compromises made to gathering data. We shed light on how academic research in violent political settings poses unique security concerns for enumerators, with ramifications for data integrity

Demanding Recognition : a New Framework for the Study of Political Clientelism

Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework

Demanding Recognition: a New Framework for the Study of Political Clientelism

Abstract Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework