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While it is widely believed that democratic institutions are more responsive to citizens' policy needs and interests, there has been little effort to examine how multiparty competition in consolidating democracies affects policy choices among competing economic interests. The questions of whether and how democracy influences such policy decisions tend to be ignored because many presume constituents in developing countries are only sensitive to relatively direct exchanges of favors for votes, such as distribution of clientelistic benefits or local/club goods. In this study, I examine some nationally important economic (sub)sectors whose policies favor some parts of the economy over others, targeting investment, taxes, and subsidies, trade protections, or regulation. Applying issue ownership theory to two cases—Ghana and Kenya—I find that partisan competition leads incumbent governments to pursue policies that help ensure economic gains to their electoral supporters at the expense of the opposition backers' interests.Related ArticlesKostadinova, Tatiana, and Petia Kostadinova. 2016. "Party Promises, Voter Understanding, and Mandate Responsiveness in East European Politics." Politics & Policy 44 (1): 5‐34. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12145Pelizzo, Riccardo, and Zim Nwokora. 2016. "Bridging the Divide: Measuring Party System Change and Classifying Party Systems." Politics & Policy 44 (6): 1017‐1052. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12188Pelizzo, Riccardo, and Zim Nwokora. 2018. "Party System Change and the Quality of Democracy in East Africa." Politics & Policy 46 (3): 505‐528. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12255

This study examines economic components of the support base for each party in Ghana's de facto two-party system. Most accounts of partisan voting in African democracies contend that some voters routinely support the same party because it rewards co-ethnics through patronage in the form of private and local community goods. A few recent studies have found that some voters vote retrospectively and sociotropically, rewarding or punishing the incumbent party on the basis of its overall performance in office. However, neither the ethno-clientelist account nor the performance assessment account addresses the possibility that African parties build their support bases around competing economic policy interests. Using a merged dataset from the Afrobarometer Survey Round 5 and district-level industrial employment and agricultural production data from Ghana, I find that it is economic interests by agricultural sub-sector that are highly predictive of parties' issue-based platforms. Voters who do not share a common interest with any of the main parties' key policies are most likely to switch party preferences election to election.

This dissertation examines the nature of party competition in the African democracies. Political parties are an integral part of contemporary democracy where their choices of favored policies create winners and losers and therefore supporters and opponents. Yet the role of parties vis-?-vis policy choice remains poorly understood in Africa. I scrutinize economic interests, whose policy preferences are collective but also exclusive, that form the bases of political support for parties. I argue that industrial sectors shape the basis of party support. I examine case studies of African democracies that have experienced partisan alternation in power to learn how parties have strategically transformed the sizes and the dimensionality of their support bases and how they vary over time and across countries. My first case is Ghana where the two major parties have managed to develop stable, multiethnic support bases. While each party has its stronghold, economically and ethnically defined, a candidate cannot win the presidency without appealing to the unattached voters. The example of Zambia shows how parties can and do adapt the "shapes" of their support bases by shifting the dimension of political competition from ethnic cleavages to policy issues and by narrowing the range of a targeted support base. While a largest voting bloc on any dimension is often sufficiently large to set the basis of a winning coalition, if politicians are successful in reducing its size to a smallest winning, they gain most benefits possible. But if they overshoot, they can lose everything. In my third empirical chapter, I examine how economic interests based on agricultural subsectors account for seemingly ethnic coalitions in Kenya. The case study highlights voting behavior of cross-pressured voters whose ethnicity and economic stakes pull them in different directions. The vote decisions by the co-ethnics of the third place presidential candidates reveal that the sector-based voting provides a powerful explanation of the political coalitions even in ethnically divided countries. The main argument is that African parties are "normal," in that they do not exclusively trade in clientelistic favors for ethnic kin, but also offer policy promises to attract broader support.

Investigation of natural products has moved toward marine environments as they are a source of many biologically active agents. The natural antioxidant compounds isolated from seaweeds provide a valuable contribution to the innovation of new drugs for chronic diseases associated with
oxidative stress. While the antioxidant activity and nutritional benefits of various seaweed products are well recognized, their proper utilization as antioxidants remains at initial stages that require further investigative studies. This review provides a detailed study of isolated antioxidant
compounds from seaweeds and their major mechanism of action by focusing on the reports from 2015 to 2019. The report discusses various active antioxidant compounds, including phenolics (e.g., phlorotannins), polysaccharides, and pigments with proven benefits against oxidative stress-related
diseases, especially carotenoids, from the aspect of benefits to human health.