2016/07/11 by Noah L. Nathan · 107 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Demographic economics #Diversity (politics) #Economics #Ethnic group #Ethnically diverse #Geography #Law #Political Conflict and Governance #Political science #Politics #Psychology #Salience (neuroscience) #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies #Voting
paper · doi:10.1177/0010414016655540
published in Comparative Political Studies 49(14), 1896-1929 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2016/07/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
African democracies are increasingly urban. While ethnicity is generally correlated with vote choice, recent research suggests there may be less ethnic voting in cities. But I show that voting for ethnically affiliated parties is as common in some neighborhoods in urban Ghana as in rural areas, while virtually non-existent in other neighborhoods elsewhere within the same city. This intra-urban variation is not explained by differences in the salience of ethnic identities or other individual-level characteristics of voters themselves. Instead, it is influenced by the diversity and wealth of the local neighborhoods in which parties and voters interact. These neighborhood characteristics change otherwise similar voters’ expectations of the benefits they will receive from an ethnically affiliated party when living in different places, producing intra-urban differences in the importance of ethnicity for vote choice.