SHAPING STATE-ETHNIC RELATIONS

The representation and advancement of ethnic group objectives in the political process takes various forms and involves continuing negotiations not only with the state but also with spokespersons for other ethnic groups.

National elections. Because ethnic groups “are often characterized by relatively dense social networks” (Fearon and Laitin 1996, 719), as well as common political and economic interests, it is unsurprising that national electoral outcomes, particularly in spatially divided societies, display an ethnic factor at work. Accordingly, Donald Horowitz (1985, 86, 194) likens many elections to a “census” and describes this census as “related to the fear of extinction.” In this census, numbers may be decisive in terms of state recruitments and allocations, motivating group members to combine behind their leaders to have maximum leverage on the policy process. The effects of this imperative to unite appeared in Ghana's elections in the 1990s, for example. As the Rawlings regime recognized the need to establish a new, firm, support coalition, it moved cautiously and deliberately toward opening the political system. Partial democratization moved ahead in 1992 as multiple parties and leaders emerged to campaign for the presidency. The head of state, Jerry John Rawlings, had a distinct advantage in the electoral process, as he was able to use state resources to outspend his opponents and win a clear majority of over 58 percent of the votes cast in the country as a whole.

The majoritarian dynamic at work in the Ghana elections has been a cause of considerable uncertainty in minority circles, because weaker parties fear being shut out of the government, limiting their access to a fair share of state allocations. Losing in elections is perceived in zero-sum terms as a defeat for communal interests. This fear has caused party officials in some instances to cross the aisle to join the dominant coalition. It has also led to efforts to design electoral institutions to promote the inclusion of all main ethnic interests in the ruling coalition.

Elites have displayed considerable ability to design alternative electoral procedures, including reserved seats in the legisla­ture for minority representation, two-house legislatures, the appointment of the best losing candidates (in the minority commu­nities), proportional representation systems, and broad-based procedures for electing presidents. The latter is exemplified by the crafting of Nigeria's 1979 federal constitution, where those writing the basic law provided that a candidate for president would be elected when that person had a majority of the total votes and one-fourth of the votes cast in two- thirds of the states (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1979, 125). The effect of this procedure was to allay the worst fears of minorities over the possibility of exclusion and to encourage the selection of moderate candidates with broad national appeal.

Power-sharing coalitions. Wide-ranging national coalitions formed on the basis of ethnic interests are frequently used when leaders want to reassure weaker groups about their security and well-being. This practice becomes particularly evident after civil wars, for power-sharing institutions hold out the prospect of inclusion of all major groups in the decision-making process after a peace agreement is signed (Rothchild 2005, 248). In principle, inclusion is seen as empowering minority groups, enabling them to protect their vital interests from within the government. In many weak state situations, where resources are tight and investment capital and job opportunities remain in short supply, gaining access to the state becomes a source of intense competition; having ethnic representation at the state level is perceived as critical to ensure a fair share of allocations. Barbara Walter's (2002, 80) data indicate that when a peace treaty includes provisions for power sharing in the national executive, 38 percent of the combatants are more likely to accept the accord. Thus, when a government caught up in a mutually hurting stalemate takes steps to negotiate on the possibility of a coalition regime at the political center, it provides an incentive to the weaker party to reach a compromise solution (Zartman 1989).

Ethnic power-sharing arrangements have been particularly common in Africa with respect to inclusive decision-making institu­tions (e.g. in the executive branch) after civil wars (Roeder and Rothchild 2005; Sisk 1996). In negotiating these collaborative institutions, state elites absorb the costs of including a sometimes recalcitrant opponent in the government in order to preserve the unity of the country, while the former insurgent party yields its claims to central state control or full autonomy to secure the legitimacy and resources that come from inclusion in the gov­ernment. In either case, the bargain remains fragile, for suspicion and insecurity continue to be widespread, commonly accepted norms are weak, and party members may resist the terms of the settlement. This uncertainty can lead to tensions within the ruling coalition and possibly to the emergence of hard-line chal­lengers or outbidders (extremist politicians who take hard-line positions and attempt to outflank moderate politicians within their own community) (Horowitz 1985) in the parties making up the grand coalition.

Three general patterns have materialized from this effort by mediators and others to use power-sharing institutions in Africa's post-civil-war circumstances. First, external mediation resulted in unsteady power-sharing arrangements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Liberia where, in the transition period, the ethnic intermediaries managed to maintain their collaborative institutions, but the procedures and working relations did not meet expec­tations. In the DRC, the power-sharing arrangement was marred by the continuance of a lack of trust on the part of conflicting political elites. Not only did the Sun City agreement of 2002 leave out important parties such as Etienne Tshisekedi's Union pour la Democratie et le Progres Social and the former rebel group, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD-Goma), led by Azarias Ruberwa, but a continuing lack of confidence among the elites prevailed.

During Liberia's transition to democratic rule, menacing rifts developed among the factional elites in the power-sharing cabinet as well as within Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), the former rebel group. Fearing a weakening of unity within LURD's ranks arising from participation in the grand coalition, some LURD members sought for a time to under­mine the transitional cabinet they were a part of in an effort to keep their militia intact for possible future deployment (“Liberia: Silencing the Guns” 2004, 2). On one occasion, as strains within the cabinet and within LURD approached the breaking point, the UN Secretary-General's special adviser, Jacques Paul Klein, and the US ambassador, John Blaney, stepped into the conflict in an effort to shore up Interim President Gyude Bryant's authority (“Liberia: LURD Rift” 2004,15608); also, Bryanthimselfinterceded in the leadership crisis within LURD ranks to encourage an easing of tensions. In these three cases of unsteady political coalitions at the political center, the power-sharing agreement survived the transition period but nonetheless revealed potentially dangerous cleavages among ethno-regional and ethno­militia interests.

Second, state ethno-regional bargaining resulted in an asymmetrical pattern when one set of Sudanese negotiators reached an agree­ment (including a protocol on power sharing) but the others failed to move toward a decisive outcome. The consequence was an incomplete peace process, with the continuing possibility that the unsuccessful negotiations in one sub­region will have a destabilizing effect on the other.

Third, when tensions run high within an elite coalition, especially after a civil war, power-sharing systems have sometimes proven unworkable, with highly destructive consequences. In Rwanda, the negotiation of the power-sharing arrangement sharpened perceptions of ethnic threat, hastening the process of societal breakdown. The externally mediated 1993 Arusha accords were seem­ingly balanced in their provisions, for they distributed cabinet positions equally between the predominantly Hutu Movement Revolu- tionnaire National pour le Developpement (MRND) and the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) (the politically moderate Hutu parties receiving an additional number of seats). Nevertheless, as the hard-line Hutu groups perceived a possible alliance emerging between the RPF and the Hutu moderates, they recognized the imminent possibility of a change in the balance of political forces that would be disadvantageous to their security and well-being (Khadiagala 2002, 469). The effects of this shift in the power balance, and particularly the exclusion of the Hutu extremists in the Coalition pour la Defense de la Republique under the Arusha accords, was highly destabilizing. By pushing well beyond what the hard-line Hutu leaders felt was acceptable, the power-sharing arrangement exacerbated conflict to a dangerous level, ultimately leading to their fateful deci­sion to launch the 1994 genocide (Jones 2001, 95).

In Cote d’Ivoire, provisions to balance recruitment of cabinet members also created conflict. The Marcoussis agreement, nego­tiated in France in January 2003 between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel spokes­men, sought to advance peace by providing for shared power between the president (Gbagbo, a southerner) and the prime minister (Seydou Diarra, a northern Muslim) as well as between southerners and northerners in the government of national reconciliation. Under the agreement, the cabinet included two government ministers from Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front, two from former president Henri Konan Bedie’s Democratic Party, two from former prime minister Alassane Ouat­tara’s Rally of the Republicans, and two from the rebel forces. Rebel leaders demanded that northerners be appointed to the key ministries of defense and interior, raising concerns in southern circles regarding security. Thus, rather than promoting an easing of tensions, the peace agreement heightened uncertainty, triggering rioting against French interests in the south for their alleged bias in favor of the northerners. In the months that followed, rebel resentment over Gbagbo’s unwillingness to give effective power to prime minister Diarra led to several boycotts of cabinet meetings. In September 2003, the rebels, now renamed the New Forces, suspended the participation of their members in the government, only joining again in December in response to international pressure. Another walkout occurred in March 2004, highlighting the lack of trust between the parties.

Thus, although a shaky power-sharing regime survived in Liberia and Burundi during the transition period, power-sharing regimes in Cote d’Ivoire and Rwanda could not guarantee stable relationships and effective governance. Paradoxically, what seems to be a logical means of overcoming deep suspicions in multiethnic societies has all too often caused increasing ethnic tensions in African countries undergoing a transition to stable regimes.

Federalism. Executive power sharing seeks to promote ethnic cooperation through inclu­sive decision-making, but federalism attempts to achieve ethnic peace by means of parti­tioned decision-making. Federalism, a form of constitutional government that distributes the functions and power of the state among vari­ous tiers of government, with each competent in a limited sphere of activities (Wheare 1963, 10), has enormous appeal because it can be designed to take account of ethnic pluralism, but it is a highly complex regime type, requiring the maintenance of a balanced rela­tionship between the center and the regions. As recent data indicate, negotiating parties have not realized genuine federalism as part of a civil war settlement; of the 55 agreements that ended civil wars since 1945 (either by military victory or negotiations), there were no cases of full political decentralization and only nine cases of semi-federalism (Lake and Rothchild 2005, 112-114). In Africa's major experiences with political decentralization (in Ethiopia and Nigeria, but also in Libya, Cameroon, Tanzania, the Mali Federation, and colonial federations in West Equatorial, and Central Africa), the centralizing dynamics were consistent with this finding.

In Ethiopia, the government of President Meles Zenawi adopted ethnic federalism in an effort to reverse the repressive political centralization policies of both the Haile Selassie and Derg regimes and to gain support (Keller and Smith 2005, 266; Mengisteab 1997, 120-121). The 1994 Constitution rec­ognized the right of every “nation” to self­determination (including self-governance, cultural autonomy, and secession) and pro­vided for a ten-state federal arrangement based largely on national identities. The nations were given formal legislative, exec­utive, and judicial powers over a wide range of responsibilities, excluding such central responsibilities as defense, foreign affairs, and economic policy. In light of the dependence of the states on the central government for financial backing, however, what emerged was a political structure that was politically decentralized in principle but relatively centralized in practice.

Ahighly centralized form of federalism also marked the Nigerian experience. The colonial federal structure, based on the country's three dominant groups (the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east) may have been necessary to enlarge and consolidate the Nigerian state, but it established an unstable conflict management system (Rothchild 1997a, 41). As independence took hold, the political parties competed intensely for inclusion in the central government, as well as for a favored share of centrally controlled resources. While competition marked party relationships at the political center in the 1960 period, with the predominantly Yoruba Action Group feeling left out of the ruling coalition, the country underwent a series of crises: the undermining of the central coalition, the violence and declaration of a state of emergency in the western region, the dispute over the federal census, the treason trial of Action Group leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the boycotts of the 1964 federal election in the eastern and mid-western regions, and the western election crisis of 1965-1966. These unsettling events ultimately set the stage for two military coups. The first occurred in January 1966, when young army officers seized state power and turned governmental authority over to Major­General John Aguiyi-Ironsi. Ironsi proceeded on a unitarist course, abolishing the old regions and uniting the civil services under a single Public Service Commission. The second coup, in July 1966, represented a reaction to the first, accepting the need for some form of federalism as the basis for Nigerian unity. The second coup also led to the death of many Eastern soldiers and massacres of Igbos living in the north. In this situation of increasing regional distrust and polarization, the head of the Federal Military Government, General Yakubu Gowon, reinstated the federal system and, despairing of a political solution to the growing regional rifts, went on to declare a state of emergency and to redivide the country into a twelve-state federation. The Eastern leader, General C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, rejected the twelve-state decree and proclaimed his region, now renamed Biafra, a sovereign state, ushering in the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970).

Central government action ultimately proved decisive, and a centralized form of federalism survived in Nigeria in the period that followed. A number of features stand out in this evolutionary political process: the tripling in the number of states from the time of the Gowon decree (often creating new ethnic majorities and minorities); the change in the presidential electoral system to require broad-based ethno-regional support for the winning candidate in an effort to encourage unity and moderation; the adoption of the “federal character” principle in appointments to the cabinet, and shifting decrees on the allocation of revenues to the center, regions, and local governments. The dramatic increase in oil revenues in the 1970s and 1980s and the new emphasis in the revenue-allocation formulas on equity and population (as opposed to derivation) created an incentive to form additional states (Bach 1997, 336). Accordingly, the number of states increased over time from 12 to 36, satisfying local elite demands for status and resources—but at a heavy cost in terms of effective governance and aggregate expenditures. The 1979 Constitution gave each state at least one cabinet-level minister, making the cabinet broadly inclusive but reducing central government decisiveness (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1979, 135(3)). Thus, inclusive and partitioned decision-making coincided in Nigeria, resulting in a centralized power­sharing structure that offered weak leadership to a country in need of effective central direction and coordination (Roeder and Rothchild 2005). In Nigeria, Rotimi Suberu (2001, 7) notes, “The dynamics of Nigeria's federalism have had less to do with the geographical dispersal of development from a central capital to regional jurisdictions than with plain, and increasingly fierce, interethnic struggles for centrally controlled resources and rewards.”

Resource allocation. Finally, the ethnic principle was evident in Africa in the way that central revenues were allocated to the local districts and regions. Uneven rates of subregional modernization, often resulting from differential colonial develop­ment policies and unequal contacts with the outside world, produced wide gaps in social and economic opportunities in postcolonial states. In Zambia, for example, opportunities in provinces with rail lines (the so-called line of rail provinces) and those without (the so-called nonline of rail provinces) were manifestly unequal, and efforts by the government of President Kenneth Kaunda to overcome these differences met with limited success. Despite adopting reallocative policies in Zambia's first development plan, the government actually spent more money on the development of the relatively advantaged line of rail provinces than was allotted to them under the plan, and less was distributed to the relatively disadvantaged nonline of rail provinces than provided for—an outcome largely explained by the latter's inability to absorb the funds (Rothchild 1972: 238). Such regional disparities cause considerable ethno-regional grievance in the relatively disadvantaged areas. If subregional elites begin to feel gravely disadvantaged, as in the Delta Region of Nigeria or among Africans in Darfur, Sudan, their latent sense of grievance contributes to violent opposition.

Unsurprisingly, the relatively disadvan­taged subregions have the highest expecta­tions of central government financial support. Surveys on local governance conducted by the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana at Legon in 1973 indicated a clear preference on the part of respondents in the relatively disadvantaged northern and Upper regions for dependence on central government largesse than was the case in the relatively advantaged western and Ashanti regions and Greater Accra. A significant number of northern and Upper respondents supported the central government initiative, seeing it as more efficient and financially capable than local council action, but those in the relatively advantaged areas contended that local councils did most of the development and were closer to the needs of their constituents (Rothchild 1979, 138-141).

Because most African states are unitary in nature and relatively centralized, their central governments have considerable discretion in determining distributional policies. Nigeria and Ethiopia, although ostensibly federal states, also display substantial central fiscal dominance over their subregions. Variances were evident among Africa's unitary and fed­eral states regarding distributional priorities, with changing emphases on such principles as need and derivation in evidence; however, what seems clear is the primacy of the central government in setting policies on allocations to the subregions.