Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT
Chiefs in Malawi exercise significant authority based on legitimacy derived from the position's purportedly deep historical origins. But, does such legitimacy confer when a new chieftaincy is created from scratch? I address this question within the context of an ongoing cultural revival of the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi, which has included the appointment of many new Lhomwe chiefs and the creation of a Lhomwe paramount chieftaincy. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and original survey data, I explore the political drivers, mechanisms and implications of the this newly created Lhomwe chieftaincy. I find that its creation was driven by top-down, elite-led action rather than citizen demands, and that the newly appointed chiefs enjoy the most support among urban-based backers of the political party responsible for their appointments. This research contributes to historical work on the colonial-era creation of chieftaincies, but does so using a contemporary case of cultural engineering.

AbstractThe political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual‐level ethnic visibility is indeed strongly associated with ethnic party support. I provide further evidence that visibility induces party support instrumentally by shaping expectations about others' ability to correctly infer ethnic belonging. I also show that the theory generalizes to the group level, with more visible ethnic groups across Africa being more likely to vote ethnically. These results qualify a central assumption in instrumental theories of ethnic politics—that ethnic identities are always visible—and help explain variation in the success of ethnic political mobilization.

AbstractEthnic diversity is generally associated with less social capital and lower levels of trust. However, most empirical evidence for this relationship is focused ongeneralized trust, rather than more theoretically appropriate measures ofgroup-based trust. This article evaluates the relationship between ethnic diversity – at the national, regional and local levels – and the degree to which coethnics are trusted more than non-coethnics, a value referred to here as the 'coethnic trust premium'. Using public opinion data from sixteen African countries, this study finds that citizens of ethnically diverse states express, on average, more ethnocentric trust. However, within countries, regional ethnic diversity is associated with less ethnocentric trust. This same negative pattern between diversity and ethnocentric trust appears across districts and enumeration areas within Malawi. The article then shows, consistent with these patterns, that diversity is only detrimental to intergroup trust at the national level when ethnic groups are spatially segregated. These results highlight the importance of the spatial distribution of ethnic groups on intergroup relations, and question the utility of micro-level studies of interethnic interactions for understanding macro-level group dynamics.

Communal conflicts, civil wars, and state collapse have led many to portray the notion of African nation-states as an oxymoron. Some scholars of African politics—often referred to as second-generation modernization theorists—have argued that strong ethnic attachments across the continent resulted from rapid economic and political modernization, the very forces credited with reducing parochial ties and consolidating European nations in classic modernization theory. Others have argued that national consolidation in Africa is particularly unlikely due to high degrees of ethnic diversity, colonial rule that exacerbated that diversity, and the partition of cultural groups. Despite the ubiquity of these arguments, there has been very little comparative empirical research on territorial nationalism in Africa. Using individual-level data from sixteen countries, combined with a novel compilation of ethnic group and state characteristics, the author evaluates the observable implications of these long-respected theoretical traditions within a multilevel framework. She finds that attachment to the nation, relative to one's ethnic group, increases with education, urbanization, and formal employment at the individual level, and with economic development at the state level—patterns more consistent with classic modernization theory than with second-generation modernization theory. Thus, if modernization in Africa does indeed intensify ethnic attachment, the impact is overwhelmed by the concurrent increase in panethnic territorial nationalism. Similarly, the results show that ethnic diversity and the partition of ethnic groups by "artificial" state borders increase, rather than decrease, the degree to which individuals identify nationally. Taken together, these results reject pessimistic expectations of African exceptionalism and instead suggest that the emergence of widespread national identification within African states is not only possible but even increasingly likely with greater economic development.

Communal conflicts, civil wars, and state collapse have led many to portray the notion of African nation-states as an oxymoron. Some scholars of African politics-often referred to as second-generation modernization theorists-have argued that strong ethnic attachments across the continent resulted from rapid economic and political modernization, the very forces credited with reducing parochial ties and consolidating European nations in classic modernization theory. Others have argued that national consolidation in Africa is particularly unlikely due to high degrees of ethnic diversity, colonial rule that exacerbated that diversity, and the partition of cultural groups. Despite the ubiquity of these arguments, there has been very little comparative empirical research on territorial nationalism in Africa. Using individual-level data from sixteen countries, combined with a novel compilation of ethnic group and state characteristics, the author evaluates the observable implications of these long-respected theoretical traditions within a multilevel framework. She finds that attachment to the nation, relative to one's ethnic group, increases with education, urbanization, and formal employment at the individual level, and with economic development at the state level-patterns more consistent with classic modernization theory than with second-generation modernization theory. Thus, if modernization in Africa does indeed intensify ethnic attachment, the impact is overwhelmed by the concurrent increase in panethnic territorial nationalism. Similarly, the results show that ethnic diversity and the partition of ethnic groups by "artificial" state borders increase, rather than decrease, the degree to which individuals identify nationally. Taken together, these results reject pessimistic expectations of African exceptionalism and instead suggest that the emergence of widespread national identification within African states is not only possible but even increasingly likely with greater economic development. (World Politics / SWP)

AbstractWhile gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general inferences. Exploiting quantitative and qualitative data from Malawi, the authors demonstrate that matrilineality's success in improving outcomes for women lies in its ability to sustain more progressive norms about the role of women in society. It sets individual expectations about the gendered beliefs and behaviors of other households in the community, and in a predictable way through the intergenerational transmission of the practice. The study tests and finds evidence against two competing explanations: that matrilineality works through its conferral of material resources alone, or by increasing education for girls.

AbstractCorruption is widespread in many developing countries, though public officials' discretion in the solicitation of bribes may expose some citizens to more corruption than others. We derive expectations about how shared ethnicity between government officials and citizens should influence the likelihood of bribe solicitation. We evaluate these expectations through a field experiment in which Malawian confederates seek electricity connections from real government offices – an interaction that is often accompanied by bribe solicitation. Our field experiment exogenously varied coethnicity between the official and the confederate. We find that coethnicity increases the likelihood of expediting an electricity connection, both with and without a bribe, which we interpret as evidence of parochial corruption.