Street Fight, Competition and Identification

PS140O: Projecting Power

Prof Wasow

2026-02-17

Quizzes

• Dates

  – Week 5, Tues 2/18

  – Week 7, Tues 3/4

  – Week 9, Tues 3/18

  – Week 11, Tues 4/8

  – Update Week 13, Tues 4/22

Context: Street Fight (2005)

Documentary about the 2002 Newark mayoral race:

• Sharpe James: Four-term incumbent, machine politician
• Cory Booker: Young challenger (Stanford, Yale Law, Rhodes Scholar)
• Both candidates are Black — but identity becomes a weapon
• Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary

Three Broad Themes in Street Fight

Three lenses for today:

1. How does political competition activate identity? (Eifert et al.)

2. How does power work in Street Fight?

3. What is “competitive authoritarianism”?

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Wrapping up Free Chol Soo Lee

From Espiritu to Eifert et al.

Connecting to Last Week

Recall Espiritu on ethnicity:

“Whatever their differences, primordialists and instrumentalists both assume that ethnic groups are largely voluntary collectivities…”

• Primordialist: ethnicity as deep, ancient, unchanging
• Instrumentalist: ethnicity as strategic, situational, activated

Espiritu’s Critique

• Both approaches assume ethnicity is voluntary — individuals choose to embrace or deploy their ethnic identity.

• But Espiritu argues: for non-white groups, ethnicity is often imposed.

“The phenomenon of panethnicity challenges these assumptions, calling attention instead to the coercively imposed nature of ethnicity, its multiple layers, and the continual creation and re-creation of culture.”

Espiritu’s Alternative: Emergent & Imposed

1. Imposed / Categorization: Powerful groups ascriptively classify others. “Asian American” was first an outsider’s label.

2. Emergent: Ethnic boundaries and culture are created and re-created — not simply inherited or strategically deployed.

3. Structural / External: The state constructs ethnic categories through policy (e.g., census, affirmative action) that groups then mobilize around.

Puzzle of Ethnicity in Politics

How to Test?

• Afrobarometer cross-national survey
  • Data consist of 35,505 responses from 22 separate survey rounds conducted in 10 countries: Botswana, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
• Advantages over case studies or anecdotal evidence
  • More generalizable
  • Address possible confounding

How to measure group identification?

We have spoken to many [people in this country, country X] and they have all described themselves in different ways. Some people describe themselves in terms of their language, religion, race, and others describe themselves in economic terms, such as working class, middle class, or a farmer. Besides being [a citizen of X], which specific group do you feel you belong to first and foremost?

Identification is Open-ended

• Allows multiple answers

• Permits them to isolate the factors that are associated with attachments to different dimensions of social identity

• They group respondents’ answers into five categories: ethnic, religion, class/occupation, gender, and “other”

• Bias possible but one out of more than 175 questions asked in the standard Afrobarometer questionnaire

Discussion: What stands out about which identities are “first”?

Let’s hear from: [Selected students]

Salience of many identities

Contrary to the stereotype that Africans are unidimensionally ethnic in their self-identifications, a minority of 31% of respondents identify themselves first and foremost in ethnic terms. Indeed, fewer respondents choose ethnic identities than class/occupation identities, which are chosen by 36% of respondents. In addition, responses vary tremendously across countries and, perhaps even more strikingly, within countries over time—a finding consistent with theories of ethnic identification that stress contextual variability.

Political logic of ethnic identification

Interpretation of Figure 1

Alternate Interpretation

Uncompetitive Elections, No Change

Competition Pre-election \(\uparrow\) Ethnicity

So what’s actually happening?

The substantive story is simpler than the figure suggests:

• Pre-election: Ethnic identity spikes
  • Politicians “play the ethnic card”
  • Citizens recognize that resource allocation is at stake
  • Effect is strongest when elections are competitive

• Post-election: Ethnic identity returns to baseline
  • Elite mobilization stops
  • Stakes recede; class and occupational identities re-emerge
  • This is not active dis-identification — just the spike fading

“Instrumental” ethnicity

Elite model: “play the ethnic card”

• “One prominent answer in the African politics literature emphasizes the role of political elites. By this account, politicians find it advantageous to”play the ethnic card” as a means of mobilizing supporters to acquire or retain political power”

• “Politicians’ efforts at ethnic mobilization are especially likely to take place during the period immediately preceding elections”

• Particularly when elections are close

Citizen model: Public goods & Patronage

• “An alternative explanation…focuses on regular citizens—specifically, on their beliefs that jobs, favors, and public goods will be channeled disproportionately to coethnics of the person who is in a position to allocate them”

• “Elections are the moment when the people who will control the allocation of resources are chosen, they are also the occasion when people should be most mindful of their ethnic identities and of the match between their own identity and that of the candidates vying for power”

Eifert, Miguel, Posner (2010)

• Ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition
  • Proximity in time
  • Stakes in election
• For every month closer to a competitive presidential election, respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms
• Increasing salience of ethnic identification corresponds with decreasing salience of class identification

“They Say, I Say” in Eifert et al.

Opening: Setting Up the Debate

“One perspective holds that ethnic identities are salient in Africa because they reflect traditional loyalties to kith and kin. By this view, ethnic identities are hardwired—intrinsically part of who people are…”

“A contrary perspective argues that ethnicity is salient because it is functional. The world is a competitive place, proponents of this position hold, and, in that world, ethnicity serves as a useful tool…”

This is classic “They Say” — presenting the existing debate before staking a position.

“I Say” + “Here’s What I Add”

“In keeping with the conventional wisdom in the scholarly literature (e.g., Bates 1983; Horowitz 1985; Young 1976), we find strong evidence in favor of the latter perspective.”

“In departure from that literature, however, we draw our conclusions from cross-national survey data rather than case studies and anecdotal evidence.”

Notice: They agree with prior work but add something new (better data, stronger test).

Two Mechanisms: Elite vs. Citizen Models

“One prominent answer in the African politics literature emphasizes the role of political elites. By this account, politicians find it advantageous to ‘play the ethnic card’…”

“An alternative explanation… focuses not on elites but on regular citizens—specifically, on their beliefs that jobs, favors, and public goods will be channeled disproportionately to coethnics…”

Even within their own argument, they use “They Say” structure to organize competing explanations.

The Modernization Debate

“Early modernization theorists such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Parsons all viewed ethnic identities as ‘traditional’ and predicted that modernization would lead to their displacement…”

“Later researchers like Young (1965, 1976), Melson and Wolpe (1970), and Bates (1983) argued, conversely, that the processes of urbanization… would deepen ethnic identities…”

Good academic writing situates findings within ongoing scholarly conversations.

Discussion: What questions do you have about paper or “instrumental” ethnicity?

Let’s hear from: [Selected students]

Break

Street Fight

Video Essay: Izzy, Lisa, Ethan, and Jash

Three Broad Themes in Street Fight

• Political competition and identity

• Clientelism, “exchange of goods and services for political support”

• Competitive authoritarianism

Identity in Street Fight

Discussion: In Street Fight, what are some examples of ethnic salience related to political competition?

Let’s hear from: [Selected students]

Power in Street Fight

Discussion: What are some of the ways power works in Street Fight?

Let’s hear from: [Selected students]

Discussion: Could Newark be described as a kind of ‘competitive authoritarianism’?

Let’s hear from: [Selected students]

Competitive Authoritarianism

Key features:

• Elections exist, but the playing field is systematically tilted
• Opposition can compete, but faces structural disadvantages
• State resources weaponized against challengers
• Media access, police power, bureaucracy favor incumbents

Street Fight shows this pattern at the city level — the same dynamics operate at national scale.

Synthesis: How Identity and Authoritarianism Reinforce Each Other

Braiding it Together

In Street Fight, identity and authoritarianism are mutually reinforcing:

• James uses racial authenticity claims to justify hardball tactics
  • Booker framed as “not really Black” (Stanford, Yale, outsider)
  • This delegitimizes his candidacy, making harsh tactics seem warranted

• Control of city resources enables identity-based patronage
  • Jobs, contracts, services flow through ethnic/political networks
  • Loyalty is rewarded; dissent is punished

• Authoritarian power makes identity mobilization more effective
  • When you control the police, the signs, the venues — identity claims stick

Questions?