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Working paper

WP121: Political participation in Africa: Participatory inequalities and the role of resources

Ann-Sofie Isaksson 1 Sep 2010 Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
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The aim of this paper is to examine the role of individual resource endowments for explaining individual and group variation in African political participation. Drawing on new data for more than 27 000 respondents in 20 emerging African democracies, the empirical findings suggest surprisingly weak explanatory power of the resource perspective, both for explaining individual variation and observed group inequalities in participation. In several cases, the relatively resource poor groups participate to a greater extent than the relatively resource rich.

Ann-Sofie Isaksson

Ann-Sofie Isaksson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg.