We use competing risks duration analysis to examine the role of ethnicity and governance institutions in executive turnovers of power in 47 sub-Saharan African countries between 1960 and 2008. Using measures that capture the politically important aspects of countries’ ethnic divisions, we find that as compared to countries characterized by one, and only one, potential majority ethnic grouping, leaders’ tenures are shorter in countries with a majority ethnic group that comprises a majority subgroup and that these leaders are at risk of losing power through both coups and elections. In contrast, leaders of countries with no ethnic majority group are better positioned to stave off coups, perhaps by undercutting rivals’ efforts to coordinate among different ethnic groups. Our results, however, suggest that the effectiveness of this strategy wanes over time. Although the results also suggest that the type of regime matters, they do not indicate a monotonic relationship between democracy and elections and authoritarianism and coups.

中文翻译：

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撒哈拉以南非洲的高管更替

我们使用竞争风险持续时间分析来检验 1960 年至 2008 年间 47 个撒哈拉以南非洲国家的种族和治理机构在行政权力更替中的作用。使用衡量国家种族分裂的政治重要方面的措施，我们发现，作为与拥有一个且只有一个潜在多数族群的国家相比，在多数族裔群体中包含一个多数族群的国家，领导人的任期较短，而且这些领导人有可能因政变和选举而失去权力。相比之下，没有少数民族的国家的领导人更有能力避免政变，也许是通过削弱竞争对手在不同民族之间进行协调的努力。然而，我们的结果，表明这种策略的有效性会随着时间的推移而减弱。尽管结果也表明政权的类型很重要，但它们并未表明民主与选举与威权主义与政变之间存在单调的关系。