Social Bases of Political Competition: Ethnicity and Political Consolidation in Botswana.

Ethnicity has been blamed for political instability and violence in many parts of the world. Yet the presence of multiple ethnic identities does not inevitably produce ethnic tension. When ethnic tensions do emerge, their forms and intensity vary spatially and temporally. How can we understand this sort of variety in political mobilization along ethnic lines? The literature on social capital argues that past patterns of social organization influence the form and quality of contemporary politics. But common understandings of social capital suggest that each polity corresponds to a single cohesive and comprehensive society with organizational characteristics that foster or obstruct collective action for the common good. To better understand contemporary ethnic relations and their political manifestations, social cohesiveness must be recognized as a variable that may be affected by past forms of social organization. Case material from Central and Ngamiland districts in Botswana demonstrate how long standing patterns of social organization, especially past efforts at political consolidation, affect the cohesiveness of regional polities and subsequent patterns of political competition. Despite sharing the same formal political institutions and having comparable levels of ethnic heterogeneity, political competition since independence has differed considerably. I trace the difference to divergent histories of political consolidation by Tswana ethno-linguistic groups prior to colonization. The relative balance struck between strategies of assimilation (individualized patronage networks) and alliance formation (distribution of patronage to corporate entities) is identified as an important contributor to differences in the value of ethnic identities as resources for political mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]