Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T12:51:17.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2018

Abstract

The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, or Staatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic identity of the president), members of this group identify more with the nation, but when this group is out of power members identify more with their ethnic group. This finding has important implications for the study of nationalism, ethnicity and African politics.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of International Development, London School of Economics (email: e.d.green@lse.ac.uk). I would like to thank seminar participants at the LSE as well as three anonymous referees for comments and suggestions. All faults are my own. Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6WPVWI and online appendices at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000783.

References

Ahlerup, Pelle, Baskaran, Thushyanthan, and Bigsten, Arne. 2017. Regional Development and National Identity in Africa. Journal of Comparative Economics 45 (3):622643.10.1016/j.jce.2016.02.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahlerup, Pelle, and Isaksson, Ann-Sofie. 2015. Ethno-Regional Favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kyklos 68 (2):143152.10.1111/kykl.12077CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akindès, Francis. 2004. The Roots of the Military-Political Crises in Côte d’Ivoire. Research Report no. 128. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Akpan, Monday B. 1973. Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples of Liberia, 1841–1964. Canadian Journal of African Studies-Revue Canadienne Des Etudes Africaines 7 (2):217236.Google Scholar
Alesina, Alberto, Devleeshauwer, Arnaud, Easterly, William, Kurlat, Sergio, and Wacziarg, Romain. 2003. Fractionalization. Journal of Economic Growth 8 (2):155194.10.1023/A:1024471506938CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bandyopadhyay, Sanghamitra, and Green, Elliott D.. 2013. Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa. World Development 45:108118.10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.09.012CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barreto, Matt A., Cooper, Betsy L., Gonzalez, Benjmain, Parker, Christopher S., and Towler, Christopher. 2011. The Tea Party in the Age of Obama: Mainstream Conservatism or Out-Group Anxiety? In Rethinking Obama, edited by Julian Go, 105137. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022011CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belsley, David A., Kuh, Edwin, and Welsch, Roy E.. 1980. Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity. New York: John Wiley & Sons.10.1002/0471725153CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruk, Solomon I. 1986. Naselenie Mira Etnodemograficheskii Spravochnik [Ethno-Demographic Population of the World Directory]. Moscow: Izd-vo ‘Nauka’.Google Scholar
Burgess, Robin, Jedwab, Remi, Miguel, Edward, Morjaria, Ameet, and Padró i Miquel, Gerard. 2015. The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya. American Economic Review 105 (6):18171851.10.1257/aer.20131031CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cederman, Lars-Erik, Wimmer, Andraes, and Min, Brian. 2010. Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis. World Politics 62 (1):87119.10.1017/S0043887109990219CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S., and Linzer, Drew. 2015. Should I Use Fixed or Random Effects? Political Science Research and Methods 3 (2):399408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Paul. 2009. Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Connor, Walker. 1994. Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691186962CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Francis M. 1999. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. 2003. Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country. Journal of Economic Growth 8 (2):195222.10.1023/A:1024419522867CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franck, Raphael, and Rainer, Ilia. 2012. Does the Leader’s Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favoritism, Education and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa. American Political Science Review 106 (2):294325.10.1017/S0003055412000172CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gat, Azar. 2013. Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gorenburg, Dmitry. 1999. Identity change in Bashkortostan: Tatars into Bashkirs and back. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (3):554580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Elliott D. 2008. Understanding the Limits to Ethnic Change: Evidence from Uganda’s Lost Counties. Perspectives on Politics 6 (3):473485.10.1017/S1537592708081231CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Elliott D.. 2010. Ethnicity and Nationhood in Precolonial Africa: The Case of Buganda. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 16 (1):121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Elliott D.. 2013. Explaining African Ethnic Diversity. International Political Science Review 34 (3):235253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Elliott 2017. Replication Data for Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. doi:10.7910/DVN/6WPVWI, Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hann, Chris, and Béller-Hann, Idikó. 1998. Markets, Morality and Modernity in North-East Turkey. In Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, edited by Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, 237262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511607813.010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hastings, Adrian. 1997. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511612107CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey Ira. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1992. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL0521439612CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodler, Roland, and Raschky, Paul A.. 2014. Regional Favoritism. Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (2):9951033.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. 1990. Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem. Journal of Political Economy 98 (6):13251348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, Eric, and Haklai, Oded. 2008. Dominant Ethnicity: From Minority to Majority. Nations and Nationalism 14 (4):743767.10.1111/j.1469-8129.2008.00362.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiwanuka, Jenkins. 2013. Mengo Young Blood Reliving Dreams of Buganda’s Independence Leaders. [Kampala] Daily Monitor, September 3.Google Scholar
Kramon, Eric, and Posner, Daniel N.. 2016. Ethnic Favoritism in Education in Kenya. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 11 (1):158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuriakose, Noble, and Robbins, Michael. 2016. Don’t Get Duped: Fraud Through Duplication in Public Opinion Surveys. Statistical Journal of the IAOS 32 (3):283291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, Donald N. 1974. Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lindemann, Stefan. 2011. Just Another Change of Guard? Broad-Based Politics and Civil War in Museveni’s Uganda. African Affairs 110 (440):387416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maas, Cora, and HoxJ. M., Joop J. J. M., Joop J.. 2005. Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Modeling. Methodology 1 (3):8692.10.1027/1614-2241.1.3.86CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masella, Paolo. 2013. National Identity and Ethnic Diversity. Journal of Population Economics 26 (2):437454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miguel, Edward. 2004. Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya Versus Tanzania. World Politics 56 (3):327362.Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul. 2001. Ethnicity as an Explanatory Factor in the Ghana 2000 Elections. African Issues 29 (1/2):27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nugent, Paul. 2008. Putting the History Back in Ethnicity: Enslavement, Religion and Cultural Brokerage in the Construction of Mandika/Jola and Ewe/Agotime Identities in West Africa, c. 1650–1930. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (4):920948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Leary, Brendan. 2001. An Iron Law of Nationalism and Federation? A (Neo-Diceyian) Theory of the Necessity of a Federal Staatsvolk, and of Consociational Rescue. Nations and Nationalism 7 (3):273296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pehrson, Samuel, Vignoles, Vivian L., and Brown, Rupert. 2009. National Identification And Anti-Immigrant Prejudice: Individual And Contextual Effects of National Definitions. Social Psychology Quarterly 72 (1):2438.10.1177/019027250907200104CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Daniel N. 2003. The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Cleavages: The Case of Linguistic Divisions in Zambia. Comparative Politics 35 (2):127146.10.2307/4150148CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, Audrey I., ed. 1954. Economic Development and Tribal Change: A Study of Immigrant Labour in Buganda. Cambridge: Heffer.Google Scholar
Roberts, A. D. 1962. The Sub-Imperialism of the Baganda. Journal of African History 3 (3):435450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Amanda L. 2014. National Versus Ethnic Identification in Africa: Modernization, Colonial Legacy, and the Origins of Territorial Nationalism. World Politics 66 (4):709746.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Safran, William. 2008. Names, Labels, and Identities: Sociopolitical Contexts and the Question of Ethnic Categorization. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 15 (4):437461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Ssekweyama, Martins E. 2016. Buganda to Stop Backing Candidates from Other Regions. [Kampala] Daily Monitor, 5 January.Google Scholar
Stone, Gerald. 1972. The Smallest Slavonic Nation: The Sorbs of Lusatia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel. 1991. Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (4):10391061.10.2307/2937956CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vansina, Jan. 2001. Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Walusimbi, Deo. 2013. Buganda MPs Insist on Ebyaffe. The [Kampala] Observer, 17 April.Google Scholar
Weber, Eugen J. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2002. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511490415CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2008. Elementary Strategies of Ethnic Boundary Making. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (6):10251055.10.1080/01419870801905612CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2018. Power and Pride: National Identity and Ethnopolitical Inequality Around the World. World Politics 69 (4):605639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Donald R. 1985. Beyond Migration and Conquest: Oral Traditions and Mandinka Ethnicity in Senegambia. History in Africa 12:335348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeskind, Leonard. 2012. A Nation Dispossessed: The Tea Party Movement and Race. Critical Sociology 38 (4):495509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Green supplementary material

Appendices 1 and 2

Download Green supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 88.5 KB