December 9, 2026 | ISR Thompson 6080 - Noon
Martha Wilfhart (University of California, Berkeley)
This paper examines why some regions of African countries become enduring bastions of political opposition, while others remain loyal to ruling parties. Across sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of electoral competition remain remarkably uneven even after three decades of electoral competition, with some regions reliably favor the ruling party while others vote for the opposition. When they emerge, enduring “opposition enclaves” play a critical role in shaping the character and durability of political regimes, yet we lack a comparative theory of where and why opposition emerges and takes root within countries. This paper explores a systematic, cross-national framework for studying the subnational geography of opposition in Africa, introducing a new geospatial, panel dataset of constituency-level electoral returns for 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We seek to explain the formation and persistence of opposition strongholds— subnational areas that consistently support opposition parties across multiple multiparty elections — and, in doing so, sheds new light on the spatial foundations of political competition on the continent. Understanding how these regions arise and why they persist across elections and leadership changes is key to explaining both regime stability and democratic stagnation in the region.