Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda, Nation Building, and Identity in Rwanda

Blouin, Arthur; Mukand, Sharun W.

doi:10.1086/701441

Cited by 92 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…We believe that more work is needed to understand the determinants of ethnic identity in Africa (e.g., Habyarimana, Humphreys, Posner, and Weinstein (2009), Posner (2005), Iudice and Michalopoulos (2019)). It would also be interesting to examine the impact of nation-building policies that aim to foster country cohesion (see Blouin and Mukand (2017) and Miguel (2004) for a recent study and an early contribution, respectively).…”

Section: Concept Of Ethnicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Legacies and African Development

Michalopoulos

Papaioannou

2020

Journal of Economic Literature

113

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As Africa's role on the global stage is rising, so does the need to understand the shadow of history on the continent's economy and polity. We discuss recent works that shed light on Africa's colonial and precolonial legacies. The emerging corpus is remarkably interdisciplinary. Archives, ethnographic materials, georeferenced censuses, surveys, and satellite imagery are some of the sources often combined to test influential conjectures put forward in African historiography. Exploiting within-country variation and employing credible, albeit mostly local, identification techniques, this recent literature has uncovered strong evidence of historical continuity as well as instances of rupture in the evolution of the African economy. The exposition proceeds in reverse chronological order. Starting from the colonial period, which has been linked to almost all of Africa's post-independence maladies, we first review works that uncover the lasting legacies of colonial investments in infrastructure and human capital and quantify the role of various extractive institutions, such as indirect rule and oppression associated with concessionary agreements. Second, we discuss the long-lasting impact of the "Scramble for Africa" which led to ethnic partitioning and the creation of artificial modern states. Third, we cover studies on the multi-faceted legacy of the slave trades. Fourth, we analyze the contemporary role of various precolonial, ethnic-specific, institutional and social traits, such as political centralization. We conclude by offering some thoughts on what we view as open questions.

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Section: Concept Of Ethnicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Legacies and African Development

Michalopoulos

Papaioannou

2020

Journal of Economic Literature

113

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“…On the one hand, this can lead to rapid aggravation of inter-group frictions (perhaps highlighting the value of efforts to mitigate such cleavages from occurring in the first place). Yet our findings have a more hopeful message when combined with those of Blouin and Mukand (2018), which studies reconciliation as a result of government messaging in Rwanda. Their work finds that government efforts at healing inter-group animosity led to an improvement inside of a generation, even in the wake of ethnic cleansing of tragic proportions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Experience of Communal Conflicts and Intergroup Lending

Fisman

Sarkar

Skrastins

et al. 2020

Journal of Political Economy

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We provide microeconomic evidence on the link between ethnic frictions and market efficiency, using dyadic data on managers and borrowers from a large Indian bank. Our analysis builds on the idea that exposure to religion-based communal violence may intensify branch managers' same-group preferences, and thus result in lending decisions that are more sensitive to a borrower's religion. We find that, in our sample of Hindu loan officers, those with substantial riot exposure prior to joining the bank lend relatively less to Muslim borrowers. Riot-exposed officers' loans to Muslims are also less likely to default, suggesting that the lower lending rate for Muslims is driven by taste-based discrimination. This bias is persistent across a bank officer's tenure, suggesting that the economic costs of ethnic conflict are long-lasting, potentially spanning across generations.

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“…On the empirical side, some papers study the impact of different nation‐building tools, such as language policy (Aspachs‐Bracons et al (), Caminal et al ()), school curricula (Cantoni et al (), Fouka ()), compulsory schooling (Bandiera et al ()), mass media and propaganda (Voigtländer and Voth (), Blouin and Mukand ()), public nationalist holidays (Madestam and Yanagizawa‐Drott ()), and national football teams (Depetris‐Chauvin et al ()). We contribute to this literature by developing a theoretical model that explores the long‐run consequences of these policies and the political economy aspects that constrain their implementation.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The construction of national identities

Almagro

Andres-Cerezo

2020

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This paper explores the dynamics of nation-building policies and the conditions under which a state can promote a shared national identity on its territory. A forward-looking central government that internalizes identity dynamics shapes them by choosing the level of state centralization. Homogenization attempts are constrained by political unrest, electoral competition and the intergenerational transmission of identities within the family. We find nation-building efforts are generally characterized by fast interventions. We show that a zero-sum conflict over resources pushes long-run dynamics toward homogeneous steady states and extreme levels of (de)centralization. We also find the ability to foster a common identity is highly dependent on initial conditions, and that country-specific historical factors can have a lasting impact on the long-run distribution of identities.We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for very helpful comments and suggestions. We also want to thank

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Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda, Nation Building, and Identity in Rwanda

Abstract: The version presented here is a Working Paper (or 'pre-print') that may be later published elsewhere.

Cited by 92 publications

References 58 publications

Historical Legacies and African Development

Historical Legacies and African Development

Experience of Communal Conflicts and Intergroup Lending

The construction of national identities

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