Solidarity with a sharp edge: Communal conflict and local collective action in rural Nigeria

Max Schaub ()
Additional contact information
Max Schaub: European University Institute, Italy

No 183, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: This paper provides new insights into the link between the experience of violent conflict and local collective action. I use the temporal and geographical information from four rounds of survey data from Nigeria to relate measures of cooperation to past and future incidences of communal conflict. I show that local collective action, measured in terms of community meeting attendance and volunteering, is highest before the outbreak of vio-lence � higher than both post-conflict levels and the generally lower levels of cooperation in regions not affected by violence. I develop a �mobilisation mechanism� to explain these findings, arguing that, rather than being an indicator of �social capital�, collective action ahead of communal violence is inherently ambiguous, and driven by a form of situational-ly adaptive (and potentially aggressive) �solidarity with an edge�. I further show that the positive link between previous exposure to civil war-type violence and cooperation holds for Nigeria, too, but that it holds for rural areas only.

Keywords: violent conflict; collective action; Nigeria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cdm, nep-evo and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-183.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hic:wpaper:183

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tilman Brück () and () and () and ().