What is Versus? What is ACPED?

Political violence affects 2 billion citizens across the developing world. The consequences are stark: since 2005, additional mortality from armed conflict is close to 2 million (PSR, 2015); development progress is reversed (World Bank, 2011); and there are high economic costs borne by affected states (Brück et al, 2013). Conflict contributes to political decline, high corruption and poverty, poor social cohesion and low institutional trust. Yet, conflict research largely fails to explain why, how, and under which conditions political violence emerges in different forms and across varying political, economic and social contexts. VERSUS is a project to understand the relationship between governance and conflict. It argues that political relationships between subnational elites and regimes incentivise violence in states under stress.

ACPED is the African Cabinet and Political Elite Data project. This project is a disaggregated set of cabinet ministers and positions by country month from 1997. These data are freely available, and will be continued to be collected.

Why? Political representation of groups across Africa is often portrayed as a result of static, predictable ethno-demographic arithmetic. An associated perception is that regimes are ethnically exclusive as leaders over-represent co-ethnics, close allies and some strong challengers as a coup-proofing exercise. We measure the heterogenous political environments developing across African states, and presents evidence that African states are largely ethnically and regionally inclusive in formal political positions, with relatively low levels of co-ethnic favoritism and large group dominance. In modern autocracies and transitioning democracies, leaders select cabinet coalitions of elites that broadly inclusive, but distort the levels of power groups and elites enjoy within senior ranks. All ministers and ministries experience significant volatility, in line with how regimes manage, maintain and limit the influence of inclusive coalitions. In short, leaders keep power by spreading it around, but limiting the chances of others to capture it.

Versus (H2020 European Research Council grant no: 726504) was a project generously supported by the Horizon 2020 program with PI Clionadh Raleigh