The decentralisation programme in Mali received a boost when municipal elections were finally held in 1998–99. This programme, initiated in 1992, is notable for its scope and the degree of autonomy extended to rural and urban communes. Given Mali's history of failed attempts at decentralisation, the current administration's commitment to the programme suggests that political motives are driving the reform. The decentralisation effort began as an attempt to placate separatist Tuareg groups in the north of Mali, and was subsequently extended to include the rest of the country. I argue that the extent of the programme, as well as the relative zeal with which it has been carried out, are products of a political strategy of cooptation on the part of President Alpha Oumar Konaré. This political analysis of decentralisation serves as a supplement to policy analyses of decentralisation in general.
Benin has held several rounds of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections since 1991, but little is known about how the individual citizens of Benin cast their votes and why. We created a model to test what factors-social, economical, and political-impact individual support for certain candidates, using the Afrobarometer survey. We explored contextual factors, such as concentration of ethnic group in respondent's area, by marrying census data to the Afrobarometer's individual-level data. We found that different candidates appeal to voters for different reasons, and that ethnicity alone is usually not enough to explain support for a candidate. Moreover, we found that when ethnicity is a factor, having a concentration of the ethnic group in your region can enhance the effect of ethnicity on political preferences.
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