Party Strategy in Multidimensional Competition in Africa : The Example of Zambia

Just as voters have ethnic identities, they also have economic interests. Government policies create winners and losers, favoring some economic groups or sectors and disfavoring others. And to the extent that economic interests divide populations into different blocs as ethnic identities do, politicians have options for building coalitions. Using the example of Zambia, I show that the recipes for successful coalition building have varied from election to election, and that shifting bases of partisan competition eventually brought about party turnover in power. With a demonstration of multidimensional party strategies, a clear contribution of the work lies in enhancing our ability to explain partisan change and alternation in power, despite a static ethnic map