Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa

Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her works include Property and Political Order: Land Rights and the Structure of Conflict in Africa (2014); Political Topographies of the African State (2003), and Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal (1993).

• 1. Economic inequalities and territorial oppositions in African politics; 2. Region and regionalism in African politics; 3. Endowment, institutions, and spatial inequality: regions by design; 4. Regional blocs and bloc voting in national elections; 5. Regional hierarchies and winning coalitions; 6. Territorial oppositions in African politics; 7. Regionalism and the national agenda; Conclusion: inequality and political cleavage in African politics; Appendices.

'African politics is often reduced to primordial ethnic affiliations tempered by electoral patronage. This book effectively challenges this conventional wisdom by adopting and refining an approach to political affiliations first developed to understand European and US politics as involving socioeconomic cleavages (including ethnic ones) refracted through regional and local lenses. Africa turns out to be less distinctive after all.' John Agnew, Professor of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, co-author of Mapping Populism: Taking Politics to the People