The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 106 No. 1 2024

Cohesive Institutions and Political Violence

Thiemo Fetzer¹; Stephan Kyburz²

¹ University of Warwick, University of Bonn, CEPR, STICERD, and the National Institute for Social and Economic Research · ² Center for Regional Economic Development, University of Bern, CH

Abstract

Can revenue sharing of resource rents be a source of distributive conflict? Can cohesive institutions avoid such conflicts? We exploit exogenous variation in local government revenues and new data on local democratic institutions in Nigeria to study these questions. We find a strong link between rents and conflict. Conflicts are highly organized and concentrated in districts and time periods with unelected local governments. Once local governments are elected these relationships are much weaker. We argue that elections produce more cohesive institutions that help limit distributional conflict between groups. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level survey data.

DOI

10.1162/rest_a_01156

Volume

106

Issue

1

Pages

133-150

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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