Seeds of distrust: Conflict in Uganda

Arbeitspapier

We study the effect of civil conflict on social capital, focusing on the experience of Uganda during the last decade. Using individual and county-level data, we document causal effects on trust and ethnic identity of an exogenous outburst of ethnic conflicts in 2002-04. We exploit two waves of survey data from Afrobarometer 2000 and 2008, including information on socioeconomic characteristics at the individual level, and geo-referenced measures of fighting events from ACLED. Our identification strategy exploits variations in the intensity of fighting both in the spatial and cross-ethnic dimensions. We find that more intense fighting decreases generalized trust and increases ethnic identity. The effects are quantitatively large and robust to a number of control variables, alternative measures of violence, and different statistical techniques involving ethnic and county fixed effects and instrumental variables. We also document that the post-war effects of ethnic violence depend on the ethnic fractionalization. Fighting has a negative effect on the economic situation in highly fractionalized counties, but has no effect in less fractionalized counties. Our findings are consistent with the existence of a self-reinforcing process between conflicts and ethnic cleavages.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 54

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions ; Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
• Subject: Conflict ; Trust ; Ethnic Fighting ; Uganda ; Social Capital ; Identity ; Politische Unruhen ; Ethnische Diskriminierung ; Social Capital ; Ethnische Gruppe ; Uganda

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Rohner, Dominic ; Thoenig, Mathias ; Zilibotti, Fabrizio
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Zurich, Department of Economics
• (where): Zurich
• (when): 2011

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5167/uzh-53572
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/77603