This chapter considers the structure of territorial cleavage from a national perspective. It focuses on patterns of polarization between regional electoral blocs, or “territorial oppositions,” in national politics. Axes of territorial cleavage arising between predominantly rural regions tend to take canonical forms associated with core–periphery politics in countries that are undergoing national economic integration and the growth of the central state. Stable axes of sectional competition, whereby leading regions square off against each other or against those on the periphery, are visible in the electoral data and in persistent policy cleavages in countries in this study. In broad outlines, these conform to models of territorial opposition in national politics advanced by earlier scholars (Lipset & Rokkan 1967; Gourevitch 1979; Bayart 2013). The analysis is built around four countries – Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, and Uganda – that serve as archetypes of different patterns of territorial opposition and core–periphery politics. Tanzania is a shadow case.

This theory of regional cleavages in African politics embeds the behavioral assumptions of microlevel, ethnicity-focused models in a broader spatial, institutional, and temporal frame. A theoretically grounded framework built on economic geography, economic inequalities, and institutions produces general findings about national-level political dynamics in African countries that are close to what classical and mainstream treatments in the comparative politics and comparative political economy literatures would lead us to expect. Leveraging this perspective, this chapter reconsiders questions of economic cleavage, urban–rural politics, institutions, class politics, policy interests, opposition and regional parties, and ethnic identities in African politics. The challenges of territorial politics in regionally divided countries that confront most African countries today are increasingly prominent in non-African, postindustrial countries. This makes research on the politics of spatial inequality in African countries relevant to general understandings of how economic and spatial inequalities may heighten the challenges of national politics. For policy and politics, the analysis lends weight to calls for place-based economic development strategies that are designed to support national cohesion.

Regional competition in African countries finds expression in tensions, debates, and competition over policy. Regional economic tensions in African countries tend to find expression in four persistently salient issue areas: (a) demand for redistributive policies and social policy, (b) region- and sector-specific development and regulatory policies, (c) land policy, where redistributive tensions and conflicts arise in the building of national land markets, and (d) issues around state structure and design (the territorial division of powers and prerogatives, as under federalism or decentralization). In most countries, regional cleavages trump class-like or interpersonal income inequalities as a driver of national contestation over issues of policy and collective choice. A 2x2 matrix predicts “regional preferences for decentralization and redistribution” based on a region’s relative economic standing and its political alignment with the center. South Africa, where regional inequality is lower and nationalizing institutions are stronger, is an outlier: Redistributive social policy is more developed than it is anywhere else in Africa, and the issue of national land market integration is less salient than it is in many African countries.

This chapter explores relationships between regional economic advantage and regional political advantage, making two arguments. The first is that relative political advantage among the regional electoral blocs tends to map onto the economic hierarchy of regions. This conforms to the theoretical expectation that politically dominant blocs tend to be economic leaders as well (see Gourevitch 1979). A corollary is that when relatively advantaged regions are out of power, they are likely to constitute a rival electoral bloc or an opposition-leaning zone. The second argument analyzes the formation of national winning electoral coalitions. Evidence from the 12-country study suggests that national electoral coalitions are built mainly via the ability of incumbent blocs to mobilize electoral support in constituencies in the weakly organized non-bloc areas. The most common alliance structure is alliances of the extremes (richest and poorest regions) against the middle. Similar patterns of alliance have been noted for countries cleaved by high spatial inequalities in other parts of the world. These coalition patterns tend to reproduce regionalism in national politics.

This chapter situates this book’s conceptual and theoretical approach with respect to earlier work on ethnicity and region in African countries and beyond. Earlier work has looked away from regional economic inequality as a political force in Africa, defaulting to theories centered on ethnicity, understood as a force orthogonal to programmatic policy interests and devoid of economic ideology. This work inverts these arguments, showing that regional economic inequalities and differentiation give rise to political cleavage and divergent policy interests. In Africa, the sources of subnational (regional) economic difference and inequality lie in unevenness of natural endowment, regionally specific patterns of state intervention in the economy that date to the colonial period, spatial–sectoral differentiation, and administrative structure. This chapter follows Lipset and Rokkan (1967) in theorizing the sources and nature of regional cleavages that arise in the course of state-building and national economic integration. It identifies institutions that contribute to the “regionalization” of national economies and politics in African countries. Section 2.5 of this chapter lays out the main elements of an approach to the analysis of regionalism that is fit for African contexts.

Does regional inequality give rise to political cleavages in African countries? If so, why and how? At what scale of politics? How do regional difference and inequality shape national politics and policy? The theory of regional politics advanced here is drawn from comparative politics theories of regional tensions that arise in the course of state-building and national economic integration. These are accentuated when socioeconomic inequality and territorial institutions align. This book argues that regional economic differentiation and spatial inequalities, in interaction with strongly territorial state institutions, shape politics and policy in African countries as they do in countries in other parts of the world. National economic integration and state-building activate subnational interests and fuel political tensions over the integration of subnational regions into the national polity and the national market. Regional economic and political heterogeneity and cross-regional inequalities shape both preferences and the relative bargaining power of subnational collectivities. These forces combine to produce persistent regional cleavage structures in national politics. Empirical support is drawn from electoral data from 44 elections across 12 countries, historical maps, and nighttime luminosity, household survey, and crop production data.

This chapter identifies the colonial origins of the institutional structures and patterns of uneven economic development that create the template for political regionalism in African countries. Functional economic regions and administrative regions tended to align in African colonies, defining patterns of regional difference and inequality that are often strongly visible today. This process established frameworks within which politically salient ethnic identities developed, and defined political constituencies in territorial terms. With the 1940s emergence of colony-wide politics, existing administrative and political structures channeled regional interests and ideologies of regional consciousness into the national arena. A boundary persistence analysis underscores the large extent to which colonial territorial grids have been reproduced over time. I explain this persistence in terms of how African political leaders, social elites, farmers, and members of rural communities found advantage in territorial institutions forged under colonialism. These regional cleavages and the territorial institutions that help to reproduce them have structured patterns of national-level political competition in many African countries for many decades.