Fetzer, Thiemo and Kyburz, Stephan (2018) Cohesive institutions and political violence. Working Paper. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1166). (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF WRAP-cohesive-institutions-political-violence-Fetzer-2018.pdf - Other - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (4Mb) | Preview

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Can institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict? Are cohesive institutions better in managing distributive conflicts? We study these questions exploiting exogenous variation in revenue disbursements to local governments together with new data on local democratic institutions in Nigeria. We make three contributions. First, we document the existence of a strong link between rents and conflict far away from the location of the actual resource. Second, we show that distributive conflict is highly organized involving political militias and concentrated in the extent to which local governments are non-cohesive. Third, we show that democratic practice in form having elected local governments significantly weakens the causal link between rents and political violence. We document that elections (vis-a-vis appointments), by producing more cohesive institutions, vastly limit the extent to which distributional conflict between groups breaks out following shocks to the available rents. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level survey data.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Resource allocation, Conflict management, Natural resources -- Government policy, Natural resources -- Taxation, Political violence, Nigeria -- Politics and government
Series Name:	Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS)
Publisher:	University of Warwick. Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry, UK
ISSN:	0083-7350
Official Date:	June 2018
Dates:	Date Event June 2018 Available
Number:	1166
Number of Pages:	42
Institution:	University of Warwick
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Description:	This paper also appears as CAGE discussion paper 377

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads