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

Max Schaub (max.schaub@eui.eu)
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 (5)

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 (info@hicn.org) and (brueck@isdc.org) and (p.justino@ids.ac.uk) and (philip.verwimp@ulb.ac.be).