Dr. Sebastian Elischer

Associate Professor of Political Science

 

Areas of Interest/Research

democratization

political institutions

political Islam

violent extremism

ethnicity

Sub-Saharan Africa

Background

PhD Jacobs University Bremen

MIS George Washington University

MA Free University Berlin

BA University of Wales/ Aberystwyth

 

Sebastian Elischer’s work analyzes the interplay between identities and institutions. He is particularly interested in how identities shape and affect democratization and other political dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In his first book Sebastian Elischer examined the salience of ethnic identities at the aggregate level of political parties in sub-Saharan Africa. His subsequent monograph Political Parties in Africa: Ethnicity and Party Formation was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. It argues that the conventional conception of African parties as ethnic parties is wrong. Instead the African political landscape is considerably more diverse. Whereas ethnic parties dominate in some countries, non-ethnic parties have become the norm in others. Elischer finds a correlation between a country’s ethnic make-up and the salience of political ethnicity: countries with a core ethnic group are prone to form non-ethnic parties. In countries lacking a core ethnic group, ethnic parties constitute the norm. The book attracted reviews by Foreign Affairs, Party Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Modern African Studies and African Studies Quarterly. His work on African parties also led to the publication of articles in Africa Spectrum and Democratization and a number of chapters in edited volumes. He received generous support from the Jacobs University Bremen (Germany) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Related work has appeared in the Review of African Political Economy and Comparative Governance and Politics.

His second book Salafism and Political Order in Africa examines the effect of informal religious regulation on violent Islamic extremism in areas of weak statehood.It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. In it Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Foreifn Affairs rated the book as one of the best books in 2022. The book attracted favorable reviews from Foreign AffairsPerspectives on Politics, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Strategic Analysis, and African Studies Quarterly. A potcast with Elischer about his 2021 book can be accessed here. Elischer has published his findings from this project in African Affairs, Comparative Politics, and The Journal of the Middle East and Africa. For this project he received generous support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the UF Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund, a research grant from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa and the American Political Science Association.

Elischer is currently one of the editors of the African Studies Review, the flagship journal of the African Studies Association. In the 2021-2022 academic year, Elischer was a research fellow at the Kellogg Institute of International Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. There, he conducted research on post-1990 military coup outcomes. He regularly contributes to public debates on Africa. His most recent commentaries appeared in The Conversation,  Foreign Affairs and the Monkey Cage. Between 2015 and 2017 he serves as  co-editor of the Africa Yearbook. He has also provided extensive advice to the German foreign ministry and the German ministry for economic cooperation. Further details are available in his CV.

Selected Publications

2022 (with Narrelle Gilchrist and Amanda Edgell): Tribeless and Democratic Youth? Political Attitudes of Kenyan University Students Toward Ethnicity and Democracy. Canadian Journal of African Studies 56 (3): 589-616.

2021: Salafism and Political Order in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.

2019: Governing the Faithful. State Management of Salafi Activity in the Francophone Sahel. Comparative Politics 51 (2): 199-218.

2019: Trade Union Mobilization and Democratic Institutionalization in the Republic of Niger. Review of African Political Economy 46 (160): 204-222.

2019: The Rise and Fall of Political Salafism in Kenya. The Journal for the Middle East and Africa 10 (2): 121-136.

2016 (with Matthijs Bogaards). Competitive Authoritarianism in Africa Revisited. Comparative Governance and Politics 10 (1): 5-18.

2015. Autocratic Legacies and State Management of Islamic Activism in Niger. African Affairs 114 (457): 577-597

2013. Political Parties in Africa: Ethnicity and Party Formation. Cambridge University Press.

2012. Measuring and Comparing Party Ideology in Nonindustrialized Societies: Taking Party Manifesto Research to Africa. Democratization 19 (4): 642-667.

Contact Information

Email:selischer@ufl.edu
Phone: (352) 273-2359
Office: 212 Anderson Hall

Mailing address:
212 Anderson Hall
P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611-7325