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ID: 190418

Legislative Elections Amid Civil Wars: Micro-Case Studies from Mali / Thurston, Alex

Thurston, Alex	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

This paper investigates ruling parties’ calculations in wartime legislative elections. The paper argues that ruling parties’ strategies are shaped by opportunity structures and the party’s desire to protect party insiders, rather than simply by considerations about ‘government-held’ or ‘rebel-held’ territory. Ruling parties may adopt several strategies: (1) ceding seats to popular opposition candidates, even in government-controlled territory; (2) allowing rebels to run on the ruling party’s ticket; and (3) blatant electoral manipulation. Ruling parties may miscalculate, including about how much manipulation the population will countenance. The paper examines these dynamics through a case study of Mali’s 2020 legislative elections.

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Civil Wars ; Legislative Elections ; Micro-Case Studies from Mali

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ID: 137754

Muslim politics and shari'a in Kano State, Northern Nigeria / Thurston, Alex

Thurston, Alex	Article
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Since 1999, Muslim-majority northern Nigeria has witnessed a new phase of political struggles over the place of Islamic law (shari'a) in public life. This article traces how Muslim politics played into shari'a administration in Kano, northern Nigeria's most populous state, and argues that governmental bureaucracies created for the purpose of administering shari'a became sites of political contests over the meaning of public morality in Islamic terms. Shari'a bureaucracies featured as prizes in unstable political alliances between Muslim scholars and elected Muslim politicians. Politicians' appointments of Muslim scholars to bureaucratic positions, and their empowerment or disempowerment of certain bureaucracies, posed fundamental questions concerning who would control the shari'a project and what its content would be. The manoeuvres surrounding Kano's shari'a bureaucracies reflect broader trends in northern Nigerian politics. The shari'a project has not been a manifestation of Islamism in a narrow sense, but rather the site of a more complex set of intra-Muslim rivalries and electoral competition within an ostensibly secular political system.

Key Words

Muslim Politics ; Northern Nigeria ; Sharia ; Kano State ; Muslim - Majority ; Lslamic Law ;
Nigerian Politics ; Intra - Muslim Rivalries ; Secular Political System

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