1,721,017 research outputs found
Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa
Get PDFThis paper draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in twenty-two public opinion
surveys in ten countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened
by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a
competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to
identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find
that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational
and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and
are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons:
because they are useful in the competition for political power
Kenya's New Constitution
Get PDFOn 4 August 2010, Kenyans voted to adopt a new constitution, culminating a process that began as part of a resolution to the violent conflict that followed the December 2007 elections. By reducing executive power, devolving authority, and guaranteeing rights to women, minorities, and marginalized communities, the constitution has the potential to transform Kenyan politics. Political and logistical obstacles will, however, pose a challenge to implementation. Yet that the constitution has been adopted amidst a broader trend toward the institutionalization of political power in Africa—a context in which formal constitutional rules are increasingly consequential—provides cause for cautious optimism
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Four Years Later: National Identity Politics & Historical Implications in South Sudan
Get PDFThis paper looks to understand the current salience of national identity in South Sudan. It is based off of a study conducted between June and July of 2015 among a sample of 75 respondents in Juba, South Sudan. The paper focuses on the analysis of our outcomes and uses a historical lens to identify particular events and projects that may have contributed to differences of sentiments across demographics. It is found that although there are significant patterns of variation in identification among demographics, the concept of national identity remains strong. Due to significant limitations, the findings in this study should be considered preliminary. However, they should help to re-inform and update parochial discourses of ethnic attachment in South Sudan, and should add to larger discourses of national-identity and the nation state in many sub-Saharan African countries
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Drought of Tolerance: Climate Change and Intergroup Conflict in Africa
No full textClimate change poses significant environmental challenges that often translate into economic hardship for affected communities. This relationship is particularly pronounced where livelihoods depend heavily on environmental conditions, such as regular and sufficient rainfall. Research has established that climate change operates as a security risk factor, increasing the potential for intergroup conflict. However, while understanding intergroup relations is crucial for developing conflict mitigation strategies, the mechanisms through which climate change affects these relations remain underexplored.This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework in which climate change leads to intergroup conflict through environmental challenges that generate economic distress and subsequently worsen intergroup relations. The framework is evaluated through three empirical chapters that investigate whether drought conditions affect acceptance of social outgroups into the community, what mechanisms underlie this relationship, and what strategies can mitigate climate-induced intergroup hostility.
Employing a multi-method approach combining statistical analysis, experimental surveys, and qualitative interviews, this research provides empirical evidence supporting the proposed framework. The findings show that climate-induced economic distress serves as a key driver of deteriorating intergroup relations. Importantly, the results reveal that attitudes toward social outgroups are shaped by both the objective economic distress generated by environmental challenges and subjective perceptions of these conditions
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Identity, Economy, and Secessionism in Comparative Perspective
No full textWhat motivates the emergence of secessionist movements, and why do individuals support secession once it becomes a salient issue? Scholars have argued that identitarian and economic factors motivate the emergence of secessionism and shape individuals’ preferences on secession, but they have examined only social groups among which secessionist movements have emerged and have not identified the specific ways in which identitarian and economic motivations shape secessionism in different types of regions. My project pioneers a novel approach to secessionism by identifying the universe of potentially secessionist social groups and introducing a theory of why the causal processes motivating secessionism might be different for different regions or groups. Using large-N cross-national analyses, case studies, interviews, and surveys, I examine how cultural identity and economic dynamics shape secessionism across a variety of contexts.I test traditional theories of secessionism using an original dataset containing the universe of potentially secessionist social groups in Europe and the former Soviet Union. To reduce bias from selecting cases on the outcome of interest, my dataset includes a set of groups with potential but unrealized secessionism alongside groups that mobilized for secession. I show that theories that emphasize the role of natural resources and relative deprivation in motivating secessionism lose their explanatory power when tested over this improved sample. I supplement this quantitative analysis by investigating the systematic reasons why economic grievances motivate secessionists in some places while identity-based grievances motivate secessionism in others. Through interviews, ethnographic research, and process tracing, I examine secessionism in Catalonia, Montenegro, Quebec, and Scotland. I show that in Scotland, economic factors have primacy in motivating secessionism, whereas identity-based factors drive secessionism in Quebec. In Catalonia, identitarian and materialist concerns interact to motivate secessionism, while anti-regime pressures encouraged secessionism in Montenegro.I then examine survey data from Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to explore how cultural identity, socioeconomic status, and partisanship predict support for secession. I show that while regional identity is generally a strong predictor of support for secession, socioeconomic status and partisanship are weaker indicators, which problematizes traditional theories of public opinion and suggests that secession is fundamentally distinct from other political issues.This project advances our identification of the causal mechanisms behind secessionism at both the cross-national and individual levels. My cross-national analysis shows that identity and economic factors are indeed important drivers of secessionism, while disaggregating secessionist regions shows how these factors shape secessionism in different contexts
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Ethnic Armies and Public Trust: How the Ethnic Composition of African Militaries Affects Public Faith in the Institution
Get PDFIn a political context where interstate wars are nearly obsolete, most African militaries have turned their attention inward to address more pressing internal security issues. The internal focus of African militaries gives a heightened importance to the relationship between the military and the civilian population, but little research has been done to understand the factors that influence this relationship. Given the importance of ethnicity in guiding political and social interactions, this research project brings together dominant themes from the study of ethnicity and civil-military relations in order to understand the connection between the ethnic composition of African militaries and the variations in trust in the military among a country’s ethnic groups. I hypothesized that in countries that perpetuate the practice of ethnic favoritism within the military, co-ethnics of the favored group will show higher levels of trust in the military than non-co-ethnics of the favored group. Conversely, in countries where there is no overt ethnic favoritism within the military, different ethnic groups will exhibit more uniform levels of trust in the military. Using Afrobarometer public opinion surveys and an expanded data set from Harkness identifying countries with ethnically-favored militaries, I conducted a cross-national comparative quantitative study to determine if ethnic favoritism in the military could explain the variation in trust patterns. Although the results are statistically insignificant by conventional standards, the p-value produced given the limited sample size is highly suggestive that ethnic favoritism in African militaries has some measure of influence over the level of trust in the institution among different ethnic groups. It is clear there are other important factors beyond ethnic identity that guide public sentiments towards the military and additional research is necessary to fully flesh out the factors that explain variations in trust in the military, especially among different ethnic groups within the same country
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Election Integrity and Political Responsiveness in Developing Democracies: Evidence from Ghana
Get PDFIn this dissertation, I examine the causal effect of election integrity on the responsiveness of elected officials in developing democracies. In many countries, domestic and international organizations regularly support interventions aimed at reducing electoral fraud. These efforts are rooted in the belief that fairer elections will strengthen the ability of citizens to control politicians and promote political responsiveness. However, we have no empirical support for this widely held belief. I describe a field experiment that randomized the deployment of roughly 1,300 election observers at different intensities across 60 electoral constituencies in Ghana. I leverage this experiment to test the effects of fairer elections on the responsiveness of Members of Parliament (MPs). Because the higher concentration of observers was associated with lower levels of election-day fraud and violence, the random assignment of election observation intensities across constituencies provides an instrument for levels of election integrity.I assess responsiveness using original data on how MPs in Ghana allocate their state- provided Constituency Development Funds to provide private benefits and public infrastructure to constituents. The results show that politicians elected in intensely monitored elections spend more of their CDFs, suggesting that fairer elections increase the effort of incumbents. Decomposing this effect, intense monitoring increases MPs’ spending on public goods but does not affect the level of private goods provision. Moreover, legislators elected in constituencies that had a higher presence of observers are more likely to abide by the national procurement laws when spending their funds, indicating that fairer elections also promote good governance. Overall, the findings suggest that the quality of elections is an important determinant of political responsiveness and provide the first causal evidence of the connection between election integrity and the performance of elected officials.To explain my findings, I hypothesize that MPs exposed to high-intensity monitoring in the past improve their performance in office because they do not expect to have opportunities to commit fraud in future elections. I contend that the ability of politicians to rig elections influences incumbents’ levels of effort to meet the expectations of constituents. The ability to manipulate elections allows politicians to substitute fraud for effort without facing electoral consequences.To investigate the effects of clean elections on the behavior of politicians, researchers need to manipulate incumbents’ beliefs about the integrity of future elections. To manipulate these expectations, I implement an experiment that randomized information to 60 of 120 MPs to say that they should expect to receive intense monitoring of their constituencies in Ghana’s December 2016 parliamentary elections. The control group did not receive such a letter. I argue that such information should motivate incumbents to work harder to satisfy the demands of citizens because they believe that they cannot rely on election-day fraud. Analysis of election results from the December 2016 election provides tentative support for my hypothesis. Future analyses of legislator spending of CDFs in 2016 would provide a definitive assessment of my primary explanation of the causal effect of fair elections on political responsiveness
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"A Legacy of Woes": Internalized Racism and Political Accountability in Contemporary Kenya
No full textWhy do voters tolerate poorly performing politicians? In African contexts, existing theory highlights lack of information, ethnic voting, and clientelistic equilibriums as potential explanations. Another explanation has remained overlooked: accountability is impaired by internalized racism, a psychological phenomenon wherein members of disadvantaged racial groups implicitly or explicitly adopt racist attitudes, ideologies, and behaviors instilled and perpetuated by dominant racial power structures. Notwithstanding its centrality in much African scholarship, political scientists have not investigated internalized racism as an explanation for impaired accountability, in large part because social scientists lack appropriate methodological tools to systematically document internalized racism and its effects. My research addresses this gap. In this dissertation, I outline internalized racism’s character, origins, and relevance in African contexts. I then leverage data from an original survey among 600 Kenyan respondents toward two ends. First, I use survey data to develop and validate new explicit measures of internalized racism. Second, I use survey data to test three hypotheses regarding internalized racism’s impact on contemporary political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors: (1) internalized racism alters political evaluations via motivated reasoning, (2) internalized racism increases perceptions and expectations of ethnic discrimination, and (3) internalized racism alters patterns of political participation. While the survey included an embedded experiment with a new intervention to reduce internalized racism, this initial attempt at causal identification did not prove successful. I therefore turn to observational analyses to test the three research hypotheses. I do not find compelling evidence that internalized racism affects political evaluations via racial motivated reasoning. However, I do find that internalized racism significantly predicts reported experiences of ethnic discrimination. Contrary to expectations, I do not find evidence that internalized racism depresses political efficacy or adversarial participation. However, I find evidence that internalized racism significantly predicts acceptance of clientelistic norms. The findings raising the possibility that internalized racism increases tendencies toward ethnic voting and drives persistent clientelism, thus impairing accountability and producing a self-fulfilling prophecy of poor-quality governance. This research adds depth to existing political science theory by shifting emphasis to racial identities in a context where scholars have deemphasized race in recent decades
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Politicians and Bureaucrats: The Politics of Development and Corruption in Ghana
Get PDFIn this dissertation, I investigate challenges to the delivery of public services to citizens in young democracies. Focusing on the elite actors whose daily job it is to implement development programs, I seek to better understand why politicians and civil servants behave in the ways that they do, and in particular, why each actor may be motivated to engage in misconduct. Regarding development, I focus on the provision and construction of local public goods, such as classrooms, health clinics, and water wells. To build new infrastructure, politicians and bureaucrats must plan projects, select beneficiary communities and award contracts to firms as part of a (theoretically) competitive procurement process. Despite considerable investments in new infrastructure, the results are often disappointing, and corrupt procurement practices are often to blame. It is puzzling to understand why civil servants administer corrupt procurement deals, when it is politicians who gain from this misconduct, and when such behavior conflicts with norms of bureaucratic integrity. My central argument is that bureaucrats in Ghana engage in corruption because politicians retain discretionary control over their careers. Therefore, the introduction of meritocratic hiring is not enough to protect against widespread corruption because unchecked politicians hold strong incentives to distort administrative processes. These incentives, I argue, stem from politicians' need to generate funds to finance political parties and election campaigns. In short, experienced and professional bureaucrats engage in corruption, even when they do not personally benefit from it, because refusing to do so can jeopardize their livelihoods and interfere in their careers. My theory calls into question the traditional view in the literature of bureaucratic delegation that giving politicians greater control over bureaucrats improves policy outcomes. I argue that while granting politicians oversight tools -- such as control over bureaucratic transfers, salaries, or promotions -- may align bureaucratic incentives with politicians' goals, it can weaken overall government accountability to the citizenry by allowing politicians to suborn bureaucrats to enable corrupt activities. Methodologically, I adopt a mixed-methods approach. I combine data from an original survey of local government bureaucrats (N=864), with qualitative data from interviews with bureaucrats, politicians, development practitioners and local governance experts, as well as observational data from a new database of local government bureaucrats (N=40,000). In my survey with bureaucrats, I use experimental and sensitive measurement techniques to measure partisan bias in the allocation of projects across communities and the awarding of contracts to companies. Overall, my results suggest that meritocracy, increasing the pay of civil servants, and increased levels of bureaucratic monitoring may do little to improve the delivery of public services in environments where bureaucrats continue to be controlled by politicians who hold strong incentives to capture state funds
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