DISSERTATION
Weak States and the Roots of Ethnic Identification in Africa
Existing research on ethnicity in comparative politics has focused on the consequences of salient ethnic identities, largely ignoring the factors that strengthen or weaken group identities. I study the determinants of ethnic and national identification in Kenya, with a particular focus on the role of the state. Employing a social-psychological theory of identity formation, I argue that state service provision acts as a reminder of one’s national identity, weakening the subnational ethnic identities with which it competes. I use a new measurement approach, coupled with survey and natural experiments, to show that the receipt of state services reduces the favoritism that individuals show toward their coethnics. My research highlights the importance of broader societal characteristics, such as state weakness, in explaining the continued centrality of ethnicity in African politics.
A more detailed overview of my dissertation project.
PUBLICATIONS
"Against the Grain of Urban Bias: Elite Conflict and the Logic of Coalition Formation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa." Studies in Comparative International Development (forthcoming). With David Waldner and Jon Shoup.
Working Paper Version
"Measuring the Vice-Presidential Home State Advantage with Synthetic Controls." American Politics Research (forthcoming). With Boris Heersink.
Media Coverage: Monkey Cage; LSE USAPP Blog; Bloomberg; Christian Science Monitor; 538; New York Times; Newsweek; NPR; US News & World Report; Chicago Tribune
Supplemental Appendix
Additional Materials - Synth Plots, Additional Tables
"Doctors With Borders: Occupational Licensing as an Implicit Barrier to High-Skill Migration." Public Choice 160 (1-2): 45-63. With Sonal S. Pandya and David Leblang
Media coverage: Virginia Insight (NPR); Slate; The Monkey Cage
Working Paper Version
Supplemental Appendix
WORKING PAPERS and WORKS IN PROGRESS
"Kikuyu or Kenyan? Government Service Provision and the Salience of Ethnic Identities." Under review.
"Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief." With Boris Heersink and Jeffery A. Jenkins. Under review.
"Social Identification: Measuring the Strength of Group Ties"
Weak States and the Roots of Ethnic Identification in Africa
Existing research on ethnicity in comparative politics has focused on the consequences of salient ethnic identities, largely ignoring the factors that strengthen or weaken group identities. I study the determinants of ethnic and national identification in Kenya, with a particular focus on the role of the state. Employing a social-psychological theory of identity formation, I argue that state service provision acts as a reminder of one’s national identity, weakening the subnational ethnic identities with which it competes. I use a new measurement approach, coupled with survey and natural experiments, to show that the receipt of state services reduces the favoritism that individuals show toward their coethnics. My research highlights the importance of broader societal characteristics, such as state weakness, in explaining the continued centrality of ethnicity in African politics.
A more detailed overview of my dissertation project.
PUBLICATIONS
"Against the Grain of Urban Bias: Elite Conflict and the Logic of Coalition Formation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa." Studies in Comparative International Development (forthcoming). With David Waldner and Jon Shoup.
Working Paper Version
"Measuring the Vice-Presidential Home State Advantage with Synthetic Controls." American Politics Research (forthcoming). With Boris Heersink.
Media Coverage: Monkey Cage; LSE USAPP Blog; Bloomberg; Christian Science Monitor; 538; New York Times; Newsweek; NPR; US News & World Report; Chicago Tribune
Supplemental Appendix
Additional Materials - Synth Plots, Additional Tables
"Doctors With Borders: Occupational Licensing as an Implicit Barrier to High-Skill Migration." Public Choice 160 (1-2): 45-63. With Sonal S. Pandya and David Leblang
Media coverage: Virginia Insight (NPR); Slate; The Monkey Cage
Working Paper Version
Supplemental Appendix
WORKING PAPERS and WORKS IN PROGRESS
"Kikuyu or Kenyan? Government Service Provision and the Salience of Ethnic Identities." Under review.
"Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief." With Boris Heersink and Jeffery A. Jenkins. Under review.
"Social Identification: Measuring the Strength of Group Ties"
"National Identity and Support for Public Goods Provision to Ethnic Outgroups"
- Identity politics structure political competition in much of the world. To what extent do group identities shape political preferences? Several recent articles suggest the impact of religious, national and ethnic identity salience on political attitudes. I report the results of two survey experiments implemented in Kenya, each of which was designed to manipulate the salience of national and ethnic identities. Surprisingly, I find no effect of priming either group identity. Increasing the salience of national group identity does not increase support for public goods provision to ethnic outgroups, and increasing the salience of ethnic group identity does not decrease said support. The results call into question findings from studies that rely on manipulating the salience of group identities, and suggest the need for more thoughtful research design in this literature.
"Bureaucrats as Patrons: Administrative Chiefs and Clan-biased Resource Distribution in northen Kenya"
- A vast literature on clientelism assumes that politicians distribute resources strategically in an effort to win votes. Can clientelism serve non-political ends? I study the distribution of patronage under circumstances in which there is no political incentive to engage in the practice. Specifically, I study low-level bureaucrats, assistant chiefs, in one of Kenya’s northern counties. Unelected, few have any ambitions for political office, so there is little reason to believe that they would engage in systematic identity-based discrimination or group-favoring patronage, as politicians in Kenya are known to do. Based on a census of clan and ethnic ties in Saku Constituency, consisting of over 7,000 households, and administrative data, I show that chiefs tilted resource distribution within their domains toward members of their own clans. These findings move the literature on patronage beyond the study of national-level executives and legislators; in the process, I provide evidence for a non-political logic to patronage.
"The Ethnic Power Relations Data: A Critique"
- The Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) dataset (Cederman, Wimmer and Min 2010; Wimmer, Cederman and Min 2009a) provides researchers broad cross-country data on ethnic groups' access to political power within their states. Since its inception, the data have been used extensively in the literature on intrastate wars, but they have also found use in studies of ethnic politics, elections and a variety of other topics. I argue that the EPR data is flawed for three primary reasons. First, ethnic groups in the data are often aggregated in ways that would be unrecognizable to country experts and group members themselves. Second, politically irrelevant ethnic groups are excluded from the data, but are often as politicized as those included. Third, groups' access to political power is often coded in ways that demonstrably contradict the coding rules themselves and do not match the empirical reality of ethnic power relations over time. I discuss these critiques in the context of the EPR’s Kenyan data, providing evidence for my claims from a wide range of secondary literature and original survey data. The errors and lack of conceptual clarity in the EPR potentially introduce systematic biases and cloud our understanding of ethnic relations.
"Fisher's Randomization Inference Under the Weak Null Hypothesis"
- Randomization inference allows researchers to perform exact inference free of parametric assumptions and in samples drawn without reference to a specific population. However, randomization inference is limiting in the sense that it restricts inference to the sharp null hypothesis, or “no treatment effect for all units.” The null of broader interest, in contrast, typically concerns the average treatment effect. I show that randomization inference is readily extensible to this “weak” null hypothesis, allowing us to perform more valuable inference in experimental and quasi-experimental settings with all the benefits of Fisher’s original method. A series of monte carlo simulations illustrate the value of the approach and test its performance—in terms of type I and type II error—relative to parametric alternatives.