Cohesive institutions and political violence
Can institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict?Are cohesive institutions better in managing distributive conflicts? We studythese questions exploiting exogenous variation in revenue disbursements tolocal governments together with new data on local democratic institut...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working paper |
| Udgivet: |
University of Oxford
2018
|
| _version_ | 1826259460197187584 |
|---|---|
| author | Fetzer, T Kyburz, S |
| author_facet | Fetzer, T Kyburz, S |
| author_sort | Fetzer, T |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Can institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict?Are cohesive institutions better in managing distributive conflicts? We studythese questions exploiting exogenous variation in revenue disbursements tolocal governments together with new data on local democratic institutions inNigeria. We make three contributions. First, we document the existence of astrong link between rents and conflict far away from the location of the actualresource. Second, we show that distributive conflict is highly organized involvingpolitical militias and concentrated in the extent to which local governmentsare non-cohesive. Third, we show that democratic practice in form havingelected local governments significantly weakens the causal link between rentsand political violence. We document that elections (vis-a-vis appointments), byproducing more cohesive institutions, vastly limit the extent to which distributionalconflict between groups breaks out following shocks to the availablerents. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level surveydata. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:50:14Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:0ff98712-d702-4174-b9e5-1962a066b5cc |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:50:14Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | University of Oxford |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:0ff98712-d702-4174-b9e5-1962a066b5cc2022-03-26T09:53:59ZCohesive institutions and political violenceWorking paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:0ff98712-d702-4174-b9e5-1962a066b5ccSymplectic ElementsBulk import via SwordUniversity of Oxford2018Fetzer, TKyburz, SCan institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict?Are cohesive institutions better in managing distributive conflicts? We studythese questions exploiting exogenous variation in revenue disbursements tolocal governments together with new data on local democratic institutions inNigeria. We make three contributions. First, we document the existence of astrong link between rents and conflict far away from the location of the actualresource. Second, we show that distributive conflict is highly organized involvingpolitical militias and concentrated in the extent to which local governmentsare non-cohesive. Third, we show that democratic practice in form havingelected local governments significantly weakens the causal link between rentsand political violence. We document that elections (vis-a-vis appointments), byproducing more cohesive institutions, vastly limit the extent to which distributionalconflict between groups breaks out following shocks to the availablerents. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level surveydata. |
| spellingShingle | Fetzer, T Kyburz, S Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title | Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title_full | Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title_fullStr | Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title_full_unstemmed | Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title_short | Cohesive institutions and political violence |
| title_sort | cohesive institutions and political violence |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT fetzert cohesiveinstitutionsandpoliticalviolence AT kyburzs cohesiveinstitutionsandpoliticalviolence |