Ethnic cooperation and conflict in Kenya

Alicia Barriga, Neil Ferguson, Nathan Fiala and Martin Leroch

No 872, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: There is growing evidence that ethnic divisions and conflict experience affect social capital and economic interactions, in both positive and negative ways. However, recent work has suggested that the experience of electoral violence in Kenya does not correlate with laboratory behavior between the two largest ethnic groups, the Luo and Kikuyu. We conduct a similar set of experiments measuring social capital and find the same results: altruism, trusting and trustworthy behavior, and cooperation between these two ethnic groups are not affected by priming people on the ethnic identity of their partners or on the salience of election conflict. Our findings suggest electoral violence does not necessarily lead to changes in behavior between ethnic groups and that cooperative failure across groups may be easily overstated or have other mechanisms.

Keywords: ethnic cooperation; conflict; election violence; priming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 H41 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Ethnic cooperation and conflict in Kenya (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:872

DOI: 10.4419/96973009

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