African regimes commonly use strategies of balanced ethnic representation to build support. Decentralisation reforms, often promoted in order to improve political representation and state access, can undermine such strategies. In this article we use the example of the DR Congo to show the extent to which the multiplication of decentralised provinces is upending a political system largely based until now upon collective ethnic representation in the state. Not only are Congo's new provinces more ethnically homogeneous than their predecessors, but many of them have also witnessed political takeover and monopolisation by the province's dominant ethnic group. In addition, the increased number of Congolese who now find themselves non-autochthonous to their province of residence heightens their vulnerability and the potential for local conflict. Decentralisation, whose intent was proximity to governance, might well end up excluding more Congolese from the benefits of political representation. The article uses original empirical evidence on provincial ethnic distributions to support its claims.

中文翻译：

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当权力下放破坏代表权时：刚果民主共和国新省份的种族排斥和国家所有权

非洲政权通常使用平衡种族代表的策略来建立支持。通常为了提高政治代表性和国家准入而推动的权力下放改革可能会破坏这些战略。在本文中，我们使用刚果民主共和国的例子来说明分散省份的倍增在多大程度上颠覆了迄今为止主要基于该州集体种族代表的政治体系。刚果的新省份不仅比其前身在种族上更加同质化，而且其中许多还目睹了该省主要族群的政治接管和垄断。此外，越来越多的刚果人现在发现自己不属于他们居住的省份，这加剧了他们的脆弱性和发生当地冲突的可能性。旨在接近治理的权力下放很可能最终将更多刚果人排除在政治代表的好处之外。这篇文章使用关于省族分布的原始经验证据来支持其主张。