Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision

Arguments about how ethnic diversity affects governance typically posit that groups differ from each other in substantively important ways and that these differences make effective governance more difficult. But existing cross-national empirical tests typically use measures of ethnolinguistic fracti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 2010-11, Vol.104 (4), p.644-662
Main Authors: BALDWIN, KATE, HUBER, JOHN D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alienation
Causal analysis
Comparative Analysis
Cooperation
Cross cultural studies
Cross-national analysis
Cultural differences
Cultural groups
Datasets
Economic differentiation
Empirical tests
Ethnic Diversity
Ethnic Groups
Ethnic pluralism
Ethnolinguistic fractionalization
Ethnolinguistics
Governance
Group interaction
Income distribution
Income inequality
Inequality
Language
Least Squares Statistics
Linguistics
Minority & ethnic groups
Multiculturalism & pluralism
National Surveys
Political science
Public good
Public Goods
Social networks
Socioeconomic factors
State Surveys
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Summary:Arguments about how ethnic diversity affects governance typically posit that groups differ from each other in substantively important ways and that these differences make effective governance more difficult. But existing cross-national empirical tests typically use measures of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF) that have no information about substantive differences between groups. This article examines two important ways that groups differ from each other—culturally and economically—and assesses how such differences affect public goods provision. Across 46 countries, the analysis compares existing measures of cultural differences with a new measure that captures economic differences between groups: between-group inequality (BGI). We show that ELF, cultural fractionalization (CF), and BGI measure different things, and that the choice between them has an important impact on our understanding of which countries are most ethnically diverse. Furthermore, empirical tests reveal that BGI has a large, robust, and negative relationship with public goods provision, whereas CF, ELF, and overall inequality do not.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055410000419