New Measures of Ethnic Power Relations in Africa

Ethnic conflicts are a major threat to global peace and security and have historically caused immense human suffering. To explain ethnic conflict, research has identified ethnic power relations (EPR) as particularly relevant. Accordingly, ethnic conflicts are the result of competing ethno-nationalist claims to state power. If politically relevant ethnic groups are not appropriately represented in the government, they are likely to develop grievances and in turn mobilize for rebellion. Research on ethnic power relations has evolved into a comprehensive research field, which led to the creation of numerous datasets, aggregated into the EPR-data family. The paper advances empirical research on ethnic power relations by providing new data, which allows more fine-grained and dynamic conceptualization and measurement of the phenomenon. I introduce the Ethnic Composition of African Governments (ECAG) dataset, which provides individual-level data on the ethnic affiliation of more than 11,000 ministers. It includes 37 African countries each covered monthly from independence until December 2019. The paper illustrates how the data can be used to compute measures of (proportional) representation of ethnic groups and highlights crucial differences to the established EPR-data family, which relies on expert evaluation of ethnic group’s access to state power. Additionally, I provide a case study of how ethnic power-relations influenced the outbreak of the Tigray war in Ethiopia, highlighting the issue of token representation.