The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

From a paper by Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou 

. . . civil conflict is concentrated in the historical homeland of partitioned ethnicities. We also document that violence against civilians (child soldiering, village burning, abductions, rapes) and territorial changes between rebel groups, militias, and government forces are more prevalent in the homelands of split groups [from the abstract].

The authors . . .

[E]xploit a new rich geocoded dataset that reports information on more than 43, 000 conflict events over the period 1997−2010 [p. 31].

More specifically . . .

Our most conservative estimates suggest that civil conflict intensity is approximately 30% higher in areas where partitioned ethnicities reside as compared to the homelands of ethnic groups that have not been separated by the national borders. We further find that homelands of partitioned groups experience a 5% to 10% higher likelihood of a territorial control change between the government and rebel groups. It is not only army fighting that is concentrated in the homelands of partitioned groups. Violence against civilians is roughly 40% higher in regions where split groups reside. The evidence thus uncovers the on-going violent repercussions of the colonial border design [p. 2].

HT: Jacob A. Jordaan 

Ethnic Favoritism and Democracy [Kenya]

Ethnic favoritism is seen as antithetical to development. This paper provides credible quantification of the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period. Guided by a model it then examines whether the transition in and out of democracy under the same president constrains or exacerbates ethnic favoritism. Across the 1963 to 2011 period, we find strong evidence of ethnic favoritism: districts that share the ethnicity of the president receive twice as much expenditure on roads and have four times the length of paved roads built. This favoritism disappears during periods of democracy.

That is from a new paper by Burgess et al.  
HT: Mark Lee. 

Ethnic diversity and public goods provision

Scholars have identified ethnic divisions as a leading cause of underdevelopment, due partially to their adverse effects on public goods. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest and most ethnically diverse countries. To address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition, we use an instrumental variables strategy using earlier census data on ethnicity and include several historical and geographic covariates. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that local diversity is not associated with worse public goods provision across multiple outcomes and specifications, with precisely estimated zeros. We investigate the role of historical factors in generating the findings.

Source. Draft.  

Does the Leader’s Ethnicity Matter?

In this article we reassess the role of ethnic favoritism in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 18 African countries, we study how the primary education and infant mortality of ethnic groups were affected by changes in the ethnicity of the countries’ leaders during the last 50 years. Our results indicate that the effects of ethnic favoritism are large and widespread, thus providing support for ethnicity-based explanations of Africa's underdevelopment. We also conduct a cross-country analysis of ethnic favoritism in Africa. We find that ethnic favoritism is less prevalent in countries with one dominant religion. In addition, our evidence suggests that stronger fiscal capacity may have enabled African leaders to provide more ethnic favors in education but not in infant mortality. Finally, political factors, linguistic differences, and patterns of ethnic segregation are found to be poor predictors of ethnic favoritism.

From a new paper by Franck and Rainer published in the APSR (May 2012). The full title is "Does the Leader's Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favoritism, Education, and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa."

The authors suggest in the conclussion:

In future research, it would be interesting to compare the roles of political parties in chan- neling ethnic pork in democracies and autocracies, as well as to study the relationship between ethnic favoritism and political instability in the two types of regimes.