Say my name: The effects of ethnofederalism on communal violence

Abstract

Extant research highlights low or unequal access of ethnic groups to socio-economic resources as a driver of communal violence. However, less is known about how institutional factors, such as control over ethnofederal units, influence the distribution of these resources in the first place. Conversely, the literature on ethnofederalism has focused on conflicts that involve the central government, while neglecting its unintended consequences at the subnational level. Building on both literatures, we argue that ethnofederalism increases the risk of communal violence between locally dominant and non-dominant groups through two mechanisms. First, it increases grievances among locally non-dominant groups. Second, it increases the utility of coercive strategies for locally dominant groups. Through both processes, ethnofederalism creates incentives for group elites to use communal violence in order to attain or maintain control over local government office. We test our argument in a subnational analysis of Ethiopia’s ethnofederal system, combining new spatial data on local demographics, government control, and horizontal inequalities. We further substantiate our analysis with quantitative tests of the mechanisms’ intermediate implications and with original interview data gathered during fieldwork. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for institutional factors in the comparative study of communal violence.