Paul Collier - Wars, Guns, and Votes

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by Democracy in Dangerous Places (pdf)


  political leadership. A few political leaders of low-income societies

  have succeeded in countering the problems posed by ethnic diversity

  by superimposing a constructed national identity. Two outstanding

  instances were Sukarno, who was president of Indonesia from 1945

  until 1967, and Julius Nyerere, who was president of Tanzania from

  1964 until 1985. More recently Nelson Mandela set South Africa on

  the same path. Both Sukarno and Nyerere got their economic poli-

  cies seriously wrong, falling victim to the fashionable nostrums of

  their times, but on the key issue of building the nation they were

  political giants. Sukarno had the more difficult task, a vast territory

  of more than six thousand inhabited islands.

  This has indeed always been how national identity comes about:

  it is a political construction. But here I want to stick with the rare

  Ethnic Politics

  67

  instances of the construction of a sense of nation in the new post-

  colonial countries. What can leaders do?

  Both Sukarno and Nyerere focused on language: indeed, lan-

  guage is so fundamental to ethnic identification that it is the main

  way in which social scientists have measured it. Sukarno created a

  national language, Bahasa Indonesia, so simple that I have heard

  Australian schoolchildren chatting away confidently in it. Nyerere

  made Kiswahili universal across Tanzania. From now on I am go-

  ing to focus on Nyerere’s strategy, for reasons that will soon become

  clear.

  Language was not the only strategy for surmounting tribal iden-

  tity that he adopted. He took charge of the primary school curricu-

  lum, inserting a heavy dose of pan-Tanzanian history into it. Chil-

  dren were taught in school to see themselves as Tanzanians. While

  language and education policies tried to reshape cultural identity,

  Nyerere also transformed the processes whereby political decisions

  were taken. He eschewed multiparty electoral competition, sensing

  that it would be divisive. Instead, at the local level the colonial sys-

  tem of enhancing the power of the tribal chief was completely up-

  rooted. The national political party created village committees. At

  the national level resources were allocated between localities, and

  hence between ethnic groups, on principles of equity. Nyerere also

  constructed physical symbols of national unity, most notably build-

  ing a new national capital, Dodoma, in the center of the country,

  an act much derided by the donors. Partly due to lack of funding,

  Dodoma has not succeeded, but it clearly demonstrated his larger

  purpose of moving beyond the inherited localized identities. Above

  all, Nyerere developed and hammered home the rhetoric of national

  unity: people were Tanzanians, and that was something to be proud

  of. Ethnic identities were not forcibly suppressed; they were simply

  downplayed. Even when Tanzania introduced multiparty politics it

  was circumscribed: no party was allowed to campaign on an ethnic

  platform. By chance, the current leader of the Tanzanian opposition

  68

  WARS, GUNS, AND VOTES

  is an old friend of mine: a fine economist, he is about as far removed

  from the politics of the gutter as it is possible to get.

  Did Nyerere’s strategy work? That is one of those questions that

  it is intrinsically difficult to approach scientifically. One guide is the

  Afrobarometer survey, which asked the same attitudinal questions

  in many African countries. One of the questions got pretty close to

  the heart of identity: it asked, “Which specific group do you belong

  to first and foremost?” and the potential responses were left open-

  ended. Elsewhere in ethnically diverse African societies, nearly half

  the responses were couched in terms of ethnicity: first and fore-

  most people defined themselves in ethnic terms. In Tanzania only

  3 percent responded with an ethnic or linguistic identifier. Having

  to identify themselves more specifically than simply “Tanzanian,”

  three-quarters gave their occupation. I think I would do the same:

  proud as I am of my origins, I identify myself more strongly as an

  economist than as a Yorkshireman.

  But these responses to survey questions may reveal no more than

  what is deemed acceptable in polite discourse: people may reply to the

  interviewer by saying whatever makes them look good. Economists

  are generally rather suspicious of reaching conclusions about behav-

  ior just on what people say about themselves; we prefer to infer true

  opinions from what people do. So the real issue is whether differences

  in the sense of identity drive differences in behavior. This question is

  more difficult. Difficult, but not, as it happens, impossible: Edward

  Miguel of Berkeley recently did it. This is how.

  Nyerere’s attempt at nation building in Tanzania stands in stark

  contrast to political leadership in neighboring Kenya. Kenya’s first

  president, Jomo Kenyatta, was in many respects also a great man:

  his economic policies were far better than Nyerere’s. When Tan-

  zanian socialists accused Kenyatta of running a “man-eats-man”

  society, Kenyans aptly responded that Nyerere had built a “man-

  eats-nothing” society. But Kenyatta could not bring himself to rise

  above ethnic loyalty. He favored his own tribe, the Kikuyu, mas-

  Ethnic Politics

  69

  sively skewing public resources to the Kikuyu heartland. Like many

  African leaders, Kenyatta had not made adequate preparations for

  his own succession. Two of Kenyatta’s henchmen, both Kikuyu,

  wanted the job, and each blocked the other. In a sea of confusion

  they decided to appoint someone so hopeless that they could rule by

  proxy: they chose a poodle from a minority tribe. Step forward onto

  the world stage President Daniel arap Moi. In one key respect Moi

  was considerably less hopeless than the kingmakers had anticipated:

  he swiftly marginalized both them and the Kikuyu selectariat. Ev-

  erything was reversed except for one constant: massive favoritism

  toward the president’s own tribe, the Kalenjin.

  As it happens, the Kalenjin tribe is itself a nice demonstration

  of how identity can be constructed. You might imagine that African

  tribes go right back to the primordial times of the birth of man.

  In fact, the Kalenjin go back all the way to 1942. With the Second

  World War being fought out in North Africa, the British wanted

  recruits for the Kings African Rifles and, sensibly enough, targeted

  their recruitment toward a large low-income area. The cheapest

  means of recruitment was to use the radio, but the area covered a

  wide range of dialects. Choosing one of the dialects in the middle

  of the range, each radio broadcast opened with the attention-grab-

  bing phrase “I tell you, I tell you,” not, of course in English, but in

  the dialect: “Kalenjin, kalenjin.” In the appalling aftermath of the

  2007 Kenyan elections, the Kalenjin led the violence. The tribe is the

  product of a radio program. Such is the stuff of ethnic identity.

  While b
oth Kenyatta and Moi favored their own tribes, neither

  devoted any serious priority to building a sense of national iden-

  tity. There was no attempt to create a national language, and in the

  school system the history of each locality was given precedence over

  national history. Politically, the colonial system of chiefly power was

  largely left in place: the local big man became all important. As to

  interethnic equity, forget it. And despite its greater wealth, Kenya

  made no effort to build national symbols such as Dodoma.

  70

  WARS, GUNS, AND VOTES

  The Kenyan elections of December 2007 provided an oppor-

  tunity for a new set of politicians to fan the flames of a fire that

  had been lit by their predecessors. By far the main culprit was the

  opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Recall that the incumbent has the

  advantage in respect of bribery and miscounting, so the opposition

  is indeed more likely to resort to the cheaper strategy of playing

  on ethnic identity. Odinga ran a campaign that was tantamount to

  promising ethnic cleansing. His strategy was electorally successful

  because the Kikuyu, whom he targeted, constituted less than a quar-

  ter of the population. Odinga probably won the most votes. That

  he lost the election is probably due to ballot fraud. But if so, he was

  cheated out of a victory that was won by a strategy that in a proper

  democracy would have been illegal.

  The difference in post-independence political strategies be-

  tween Tanzania and Kenya was sufficiently stark to lay the founda-

  tions for a natural experiment: an attempt to build a sense of national

  identity, versus an attempt to reinforce tribal identity. However,

  a natural experiment needs much more than divergent strategies:

  the two places need to be otherwise comparable. The two countries

  were indeed pretty similar and certainly ethnically diverse: Kenya

  had forty-eight tribes, Tanzania even more. Miguel enhanced these

  country-level similarities by focusing on two districts, one Kenyan,

  the other Tanzanian. He selected them because they were even more

  similar than the countries themselves: Busia in Kenya, and Meatu in

  Tanzania. The international border, established in colonial times,

  had basically driven an arbitrary straight line through what until

  then had been one area. But divergent strategies and comparability

  are still not enough for a natural experiment. There needs to be some

  quantitatively measurable difference in outcomes: identity is a slip-

  pery sort of entity to observe. Miguel decided to measure the supply

  of some key public goods, such as the amount of money raised lo-

  cally for schools, the provision of school facilities, and whether wells

  were in working order.

  Ethnic Politics

  71

  But if Busia was to be one observation and Meatu the other,

  there was not going to be any statistical power whatsoever: either

  Busia is going to be better than Meatu or it is going to be worse,

  and a priori, there is a 50 percent chance of finding either outcome.

  Miguel’s key inspiration was to use the fact that both Busia and Me-

  atu were composed of many localities. Some of these localities had

  high degrees of ethnic diversity whereas others were homogenous.

  He realized that he could use these differences in the degree of di-

  versity between different localities within Busia and Meatu to see

  how much damage diversity was doing in each society.

  In Busia, the Kenyan district, he found exactly the pattern that

  researchers have usually found when they investigate the conse-

  quences of ethnic diversity. The more diverse localities within Busia

  had worse public-goods provision than the more homogenous lo-

  calities. What is more, the effect was really big. The average, fairly

  diverse locality had 25 percent less school funding per pupil than

  the homogenous localities. This was a problem fully recognized by

  head teachers in the ethnically diverse schools: they blamed ethnic

  rivalries for the unwillingness of parents to support the school.

  How about Meatu, the Tanzanian district? The key test in the

  research design was whether ethnic diversity was similarly damag-

  ing there. There was just as much variation between localities in

  Meatu as in Busia: some localities were highly diverse and others

  were homogenous. It turned out not to matter at all: diversity had

  no discernible effect on public-goods provision. The statistics were

  supported by the interviews: Miguel received comments such as

  “We’re all Tanzanians” and “This is Tanzania, we do not have that

  sort of problem here.”

  I hope I have given you a flavor of Miguel’s study: it was, in

  fact, a beautifully crafted piece of social science. It is important be-

  cause it provides pretty convincing evidence that Nyerere’s strategy

  of building national identity had actually worked. Over a period of

  forty years, between independence and the survey on which these

  72

  WARS, GUNS, AND VOTES

  results are based, the damage normally caused by ethnic diversity

  had been dramatically reduced and perhaps even eliminated. Nyer-

  ere had turned a new country into a new nation.

  Nyerere and Sukarno showed what could be done by leader-

  ship. Unfortunately, their approach was rare in the societies of the

  bottom billion. Far more common was that of Kenyatta and Moi in

  Kenya, where the consequences of a strategy of emphasizing ethnic

  identity over Kenyan identity are now all too apparent. As I write

  this I am trying to follow events in the aftermath of Kenya’s election.

  Around one thousand Kenyans have died in ethnic violence. It is

  hard to discuss research in such a context. But recall that in Nigeria

  Pedro Vicente and I had conducted surveys during the presidential

  elections of April 2007. Since they had proved feasible, I decided

  to try the same approach during the Kenyan elections, which I an-

  ticipated would be rough. I put together a team. As you have seen,

  ethnic diversity in teams can be a source of strength: ours had a Ke-

  nyan, an American, a Belgian, a Mexican, and a German. This work

  was so recent that I can report only a few preliminary results.

  The survey was conducted prior to the explosion of violence

  that followed the election. But even at this stage, five in every six Ke-

  nyans feared becoming victims of political violence, and one in ten

  had already been threatened about the consequences of voting the

  wrong way. Just as in Nigeria, electoral violence looks to have been

  a strategy of the weak: it was the government supporters who were

  the most fearful, and events proved them right. But the threats did

  not well upward from community-based antagonisms. The incite-

  ment to violence was seen as coming down from the organizations

  of the political parties. Violence against the Kikuyu was a deliberate

  electoral strategy of Raila Odinga.

  Consistent with the allegations of fraud that followed the gov-

  ernment declaration of victory, we found that at the time of our sur-

/>   vey, which was a few days prior to the elections, the opposition was

  poised to win. Nor would this have come as a surprise to the Kenyan

  Ethnic Politics

  73

  electorate: when asked how free and fair they expected the elections

  to be, 70 percent expected problems, and these fears were dispro-

  portionately high among opposition supporters. Ethnicity was all:

  only half of voters regarded their primary identity as being Kenyan.

  More revealingly, voting intentions were massively skewed by eth-

  nicity. Not only did the Kikuyu vote for Kibaki and the Luo vote

  for Odinga, but even the tribes other than those of the candidates

  largely voted as ethnic bloc votes.

  But here are the results that I think toll the death knell for eth-

  nic politics. They concern the discipline that electoral competition is

  supposed to provide on government economic policies. In the years

  leading up to the election the Kenyan economy had been doing

  rather well: its fastest growth for more than two decades. Nor had

  the benefits of growth been confined to the Kikuyu. Even the Luo

  recognized that they had become better off. Kibaki even managed

  to get amazingly strong approval ratings from Luo respondents. It

  didn’t help him. He was the wrong tribe and they were not going to

  vote for him: 98 percent of the Luo voted for Odinga. With this sort

  of voting behavior, there is little incentive for a president to provide

  national public goods: he might as well favor his own. The strong

  ethnic identities that Kenyan political leaders had fostered had ef-

  fectively deprived electoral competition of its potential for hold-

  ing a government to account. As for the other supposed benefit of

  elections, legitimacy, here is another comment from Koki Muli, the

  head of Kenya’s Institute for Education in Democracy: “Do these

  people not care about legitimacy?”*

  * “Kabaki Win Spurs Kenya Turmoil,” Financial Times, December 31, 2007, p. 6.

  C h a p t e r 3

  I N S I D E T H E C A U L D R O N :

  P O S T - C O N F L I C T S E T T L E M E N T S

  With the millennium came peace. The

  international community finally started to pay

  serious attention to the running sores of long-

  lasting civil wars. Peace conferences were called, pressure was

 

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