A political settlement dataset of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

To what extent do ruling elites, and the coalitions which support them, influence the governance and development of a particular country? Recently, the 'political settlement' analysis has made important advances in understanding these issues, by specifically looking at how power is organized and distributed in society. This analysis has generated great interest, both in academic and policycircles. This research project wants to add to this literature through the case-study of the Democratic Republic of Congo: first, it wants to provide a concrete methodological tool to analyse these political settlements. This will be done through the establishment of a dataset of the ruling elites in the DRC since the country's independence in 1960. Moreover, through qualitative interviews, the relation between those elites and their wider support base (the 'ruling coalition') will be understood. Second, adding to the political settlement literature, which principally focusses on the national level, this project aims to analyse the multi-leveled nature of these settlements: these are not only determined at the national level, but are in a process of mutual interaction with the local level. In order to understand this, a similar research exercise (dataset and qualitative interviews) will be conducted in two key-provinces. Third, in doing so, this project will determine the main characteristics guiding these political settlements, such as ethnicity, military support base, and so on.

Keywords:DR CONGO

Disciplines:Area studies, National politics not elsewhere classified, Political representation, executive and legislative politics