Estimating the relationship between ethnic inequality, conflict and voter turnout in Africa using geocoded data

Klaus Ackermann, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Russell Smyth

World Development, 2024, vol. 180, issue C

Abstract: To what extent is voter turnout influenced by ethnic inequality? We combine ethnolinguistic maps on sub-national locations of ethnic groups with night-time light satellite images to construct a dataset of ethnic inequality across sub-national locations in 24 African countries. Using election data from the constituency-level elections archive, we show that ethnic inequality is negatively associated with voter turnout. This relationship holds even after we control for endogeneity and geographic characteristics. We also construct a dataset of election conflict across the sub-national areas. We find that an increase in ethnic inequality is associated with an increase in conflict, which reduces voter turnout.

Keywords: Ethnic inequality; Conflict; Voter turnout; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24001141
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:180:y:2024:i:c:s0305750x24001141

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106644

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().