Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design

This pathbreaking work integrates African countries into broader comparative theories of how spatial inequality shapes political competition over the construction of markets, states, and nations. Existing literature on African countries has found economic cleavages, institutions, and policy choices to be of low salience in national politics. This book inverts these arguments. Boone trains our analytic focus on the spatial inequalities and territorial institutions that structure national politics in Africa, showing that regional cleavages find expression in both electoral competition and policy struggles over redistribution, sectoral investment, market integration, and state design. Leveraging comparative politics theory, Boone argues that African countries' regional and core-periphery tensions are similar to those that have shaped national economic integration in other parts of the world. Bringing together electoral and economic geography, the book offers a new and powerful map of political competition on the African continent.

這部開創性的作品將非洲國家納入更廣泛的比較理論中，探討空間不平等如何塑造政治競爭，涉及市場、國家和民族建設。現有的非洲國家文獻發現，經濟分裂、制度和政策選擇在國家政治中的重要性較低。這本書顛覆了這些觀點。布恩將我們的分析焦點放在結構非洲國家政治的空間不平等和領土制度上，顯示區域分裂在選舉競爭和政策爭論中都有體現，包括再分配、部門投資、市場整合和國家設計。布恩運用比較政治學理論，主張非洲國家的區域和核心-邊緣緊張關係與塑造世界其他地區國家經濟整合的因素相似。這本書結合選舉和經濟地理學，提供了非洲大陸政治競爭的新而有力的地圖。