Work

Cohesive Institutions and Political Violence

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: Can revenue sharing of resource rents be a source of distributive conflict? Can cohesive institutions avoid such conflicts? We exploit exogenous variation in local government revenues and new data on local democratic institutions in Nigeria to study these questions. We find a strong link between rents and conflict. Conflicts are highly organized and concentrated in districts and time periods with unelected local governments. Once local governments are elected these relationships are much weaker. We argue that elections produce more cohesive institutions that help limit distributional conflict between groups. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level survey data.

Source: The Review of Economics and Statistics

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01156

Authors: Thiemo Fetzer, Stephan Kyburz

Institutions: University of Bonn, University of Warwick, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, University of Bern

Language: English

Topic: Natural Resources and Economic Development

Subfield: General Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Economic and Social Research Council