Avoiding, Containing or Conceding? Political Parties and Ethno-Regional Movements in Kenya and Nigeria

The mobilisation of ethnicity and the crafting of ethno-regional block votes around elections is common in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where political parties often command regional strongholds. In some cases, however, the links between political parties and the local electorate are made more complicated, both by multi-level governance institutions and by the presence of ethno-regional movements with distinct grievances and pronounced demands for self-rule or for preferential treatment within the national polity. Such demands present political parties with serious challenges of how to anchor or sustain their dominance in these regions. How do parties relate to ethno-regional movements and their demands? Do they avoid them, seek to incorporate and transform them or concede to them? This paper presents a structured focused comparison of these questions in two countries with strong sub-national governance institutions and pronounced ethno-regional mobilisation. It examines how regionally dominant parties relate to ethno-regional mobilisation in Coast region in Kenya and the Niger Delta in Nigeria, and studies this over the period of three elections in each country to capture how continuity and change in party strategy is related to electoral outcome.