Ethnic cooperation and conflict in Kenya

• Published in: Journal of behavioral and experimental economics 2023-10, Vol.106, p.102050, Article 102050
• Main Authors: Barriga, Alicia, Ferguson, Neil T. N．, Fiala, Nathan, Leroch, Martin Alois
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Conflict; Election violence; Ethnic cooperation; Priming
• ISSN: 2214-8043; 2214-8051
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.102050

•Trust and cooperative behavior are key for economic development, through access to jobs, credit and participation in informal saving and insurance arrangements.•Economic cooperation can become difficult after violent events, since they may lead to economic and social isolation and may influence intergroup interactions.•We analyze the role of situations of inter-ethnic tension on four facets of interpersonal behavior: TACC (trust, altruism, cooperation, and coordination) captured via the dictator, public goods, trust, and stag hunt games.•Results show that the probability of coordination decreases for those who were primed and played in-group. We don't find significant effects for the other facets. Results for altruism and cooperation are consistent with Berge et al. (2019). There is growing evidence that ethnic divisions and conflict experiences affect social capital and economic interactions in both positive and negative ways. We conduct a set of experiments measuring social capital in Kenya between the two largest ethnic groups, the Luo and Kikuyu, who experienced violence in the 2007 and 2008 post-electoral riots. Our findings indicate trust, coordination, altruism, and cooperation between these groups are not affected by priming people on the ethnic identity of their partners or on the salience of election conflict. Our results suggest electoral violence does not necessarily lead to changes in economic behavior between ethnic groups and that cooperative failure across groups may be easily overstated or might have other mechanisms. These findings are consistent with recent evidence suggesting that experience of electoral violence in Kenya does not correlate with laboratory behavior between the Luo and Kikuyu.