Seeds of Distrust: Conflict in Uganda

Author

Dominic Rohner (dominic.rohner@unil.ch), Mathias Thoenig (mathias.thoenig@unil.ch) and Fabrizio Zilibotti (fabrizio.zilibotti@econ.uzh.ch)

No 8741, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: 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 large causal effects on trust and ethnic identity of an exogenous outburst of ethnic conflicts in 2002-05. 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 spatial 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.

Keywords: ethnic conflict; ethnic identity; fighting; fractionalisation; slavery; social capital; trust; Uganda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D74 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-evo and nep-soc
Date: 2012-01
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Related works:
Journal Article: Seeds of distrust: conflict in Uganda (2013) 
Working Paper: Seeds of Distrust: Conflict in Uganda (2012) 
Working Paper: Seeds of Distrust: Conflict in Uganda (2012) 
Working Paper: Seeds of distrust: Conflict in Uganda (2011) 
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