Preparing for genocide: Community work in Rwanda

Arbeitspapier

How do political elites prepare the civilian population for participation in violent conflict? We empirically investigate this question using village-level data from the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Every Saturday before 1994, Rwandan villagers had to meet to work on community infrastructure, a practice called Umuganda. This practice was highly politicized and, in the years before the genocide, regularly used for spreading political propaganda. To establish causality, we exploit cross-sectional variation in meeting intensity induced by exogenous weather fluctuations. We find that an additional rainy Saturday resulted in a five percent lower civilian participation rate in genocide violence. These results pass a number of indirect tests of the exclusion restriction as well as other robustness checks and placebo tests.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2015:1

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions ; Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: Africa; Oceania
• Subject: Conflict ; Rainfall

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bonnier, Evelina ; Poulsen, Jonas ; Rogall, Thorsten ; Stryjan, Miri
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Uppsala University, Department of Economics
• (where): Uppsala
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/125541
• URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-242293
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET