The Role of Pan-African Ideology in Ethnic Power Sharing

What are the conditions under which governments form more ethnically inclusive coalitions? Previous contributions highlight strategic incentives as well as colonial and precolonial legacies as determinants of ethnically inclusive government coalitions but overlook the impact of political mobilization during the decolonization period. We argue that ideological exposure and commitment to the Pan-African anticolonial movement played a vital role in African leaders’ decisions to share power with other ethnic communities. We leverage novel data on African government leaders’ attendance at decolonization-era Pan-African conferences through a unique collection of conference delegate lists. Accounting for rival mechanisms, we find that African political elites who attended Pan-African conferences formed ethnically more inclusive government coalitions when they became government leaders. Our findings imply that the ideological influence and commitment signaled by conference attendance affected political leaders’ approach to form more inclusive governments and that ethnic coalitions have systematically unexplored legacies in the Pan-African decolonization movement.