Swing voters occupy a special place in the study of elections and policymaking around the world. At the same time, a canonical literature on diverse multi-ethnic societies has shown that in contexts where ethnic identities are politically salient, multiparty electoral competition will invariably lead politicians and political parties to focus their mobilization efforts on core voters in their ethnic bases. In Multiethnic Democracy: The Logic of Elections and Policymaking in Kenya, Jeremy Horowitz brings much-needed attention back to swing voters and their importance in determining the logic of electoral campaigning and the post-election distribution of public goods and services. The primary empirical focus of the book is Kenya, a relatively young multiethnic democracy where the salience of ethnicity has been tied to all aspects of political life such as voting, judicial decisions, and political violence. Despite being based on a single-country case, Horowitz’s inquiry draws on a rich literature on distributive politics, voting behavior, and campaigning in both western and developing democracies resulting in a compelling analysis, the insights of which should inform scholarly debates on African politics and comparative politics more generally.
Horowitz starts off the book from the intuition that Kenya is a highly unlikely case for electoral competition to induce political actors to concentrate on courting the swing voter and to engage in broad-based, universal—rather than particularistic—campaign appeals and policy making. Indeed, as Horowitz astutely states, “accounts routinely describe Kenya as a country where bare-knuckle tactics of ethnic mobilization prevail; where elites cynically play on ethnic antipathies for electoral gain … and where incumbents favor ethno-partisan constituents in patronage allocations” (p. 5). Yet Horowitz does not acquiesce to this dominant narrative and marshals an impressive array of evidence to demonstrate that these characterizations need serious updating, especially in the period following Kenya’s transition to democratic multiparty politics in the 1990s. In so doing, he 1) develops a novel conceptualization of the swing voter more suited to ethnically diverse societies where political parties do not compete based on ideological commitments or programmatic policy-based platforms; 2) documents how the pursuit of swing voters shapes how political parties engage in campaign activities during elections; and 3) assesses how this model of electioneering affects decisions to allocate public services in the aftermath of elections. Horowitz’s decision to draw a line connecting swing voters, campaigning, and policy provides readers a comprehensive—and therefore a much more compelling—look at the logic underpinning elections and policymaking in diverse societies.
The impressive scope of the argument notwithstanding, what sets this book apart is the empirical evidence that Horowitz gathers in support of his theoretical framework. The empirical chapters in this book are careful and thorough, leaving no assumption untested, devising innovative measurement and analysis strategies that build confidence in the findings reported. A prime example of this methodical approach is the book’s third chapter, where Horowitz reconceptualizes the notion of the swing voter in multiethnic societies. Rather than take the existing notion of swing voters primarily developed in mature democracies as true, he advocates for a new conceptualization based on whether a representative or key figure of an ethnic group (or a coethnic leader) is represented on the ballot in the presidential elections. This definition is attuned to context, as the power to distribute resources is concentrated in the hands of the executive in many developing countries, and voters will look to the ethnicity of the presidential candidates to form expectations as to whether they would benefit materially if/once a candidate is elected. Instead of simply asserting that readers should accept this new definition and move on to the next stage of the analysis, Horowitz draws on three rounds of nationally representative surveys conducted prior to the 2007, 2013, and 2017 Kenyan presidential elections to show that (swing) voters who do not have a coethnic leader on the presidential ballot were significantly less likely to report affinity to political parties, and much more likely to switch their voting intentions between candidates. This simple but thoughtful exercise places all subsequent analysis that uses various operationalizations of the swing voter/swing district concept on solid empirical footing and ultimately contributes to the overall strength of the empirical analysis.
However, the true highlight of the book is the empirical chapters based on the novel data that Horowitz gathered on party campaign activities in Kenya. Whereas the day-to-day schedules of presidential candidates and their campaigns are made readily available both for the press and popular consumption in countries such as the United States, such information is extremely challenging to acquire in much of the developing world, perhaps even more so in sub-Saharan Africa. The fact that Horowitz was able to not only identify specific places campaign rallies were held but also the rhetoric and appeals used at these campaign rallies is a testament to his tenacity and willingness to invest in serious shoe-leather fieldwork. It also explains why the article versions of these chapters were published earlier in top comparative politics journals, read broadly, and inspired follow-up work by Africanists and comparativists working on campaigns. The findings from these chapters unequivocally demonstrate that the strategies parties employ in terms of the placement of campaign rallies and the messaging during the rallies privilege swing voters and are more universalist in nature than we are led to expect, challenging the prevailing wisdom.
As with many books based on a single case, readers might be left wondering whether the insights gained from Horowitz’s book will have broad applicability beyond the Kenyan context he studies, given Kenya’s distinctive sociopolitical features. Perhaps in anticipation, Horowitz adds a chapter to the book where he examines whether his insights travel to Ghana, another diverse multiethnic country in West Africa. He finds that following Ghana’s transition to multipartyism in 1992, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Ghana’s two main political parties, engaged in broad-based universalistic campaign activities primarily targeted at courting swing voters. This important addition makes the book even more legible to readers whose regional/country interests lie elsewhere and convinces us of the external validity of his findings.
Like any great work, Horowitz’s book opens the door to many unanswered questions in the study of elections, campaigns, and policymaking in the developing world. For example, Horowitz’s data collection coincided with the rapid expansion of mobile communications infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa. As mobile technology lowers the costs associated with campaign outreach to voters and enables the direct engagement of citizens via the internet and various social media platforms, how will parties and candidates adapt their strategies in response to these changes? Will the acceleration of urbanization also affect the nature of campaigning and policymaking that political parties engage in? What are the implications of these campaign strategies for ethnic voting in multiethnic societies in the long run? Regardless of answers to these questions, Horowitz’s book makes significant contributions to our understanding of the logic of campaigns, elections, and policymaking in diverse societies. It critically informs the literature on voting behavior, distributive politics, and political development in the developing world. I believe that this book will be a must-read for scholars of comparative politics, political behavior, and African politics.
