Ethnic Diversity and Political Conflict in Africa

Robert Bates piece, “Ethnicity and Development in Africa” makes two assumptions about the importance of ethnicity in African states, one very straightforward, and the other more unconventional. Bates first explains how ethnic ties lead to the “formation of human capital.” This makes intuitive sense, as individual ethnicities can organize themselves along familial lines. Thus these familial ties can help fund the education of the younger generation, provide money to buy food and other supplies, and the benefits can come full circle as the newly educated younger generation can send money back once they have gotten well paying jobs and take care of the older generation who first started them. However Bates’ description seems to remind me of the dichotomy between modern and traditional societies and the implications that has on the success of the modern Westphalian nation-state.

First, strong ethnic ties undermine the ability of the state to legitimize its government institutions and take on a role as a provider for society. Also these ethnic ties pose a problem for creating a flourishing civil society which does not rely on divisive ethnic bonds. Sure, these kinship groups provide order and norms for their members, but then it takes the wind out of the government when it attempts to impose its own norms and enforce them. Second, what would happen if one ethnic group seems to develop better ethnic ties than others and increases its social capital dramatically so the other groups become envious? This is exactly what happened to the Igbo people of Nigeria and it ended up leading to the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967. Bates does not address these implications in his paper.

His second more unconventional claim is that ethnic diversity does not imply political violence. Bates proves this through his study in which he finds, although the incidents of political violence are clearly linked to an ethnic minority being at risk, much of the other time when an ethnic minority was at risk (94 percent of the time according to him), there in fact was no political violence. The problems he admits he faced in his panel data regression model lead me to question some of his findings, but that is another story. His conclusion though I do support: although ethnic diversity is not a sufficient condition for political violence, it does play a large part in spurring conflicts. I would be interested to see then conversely, what percentage of conflicts in Africa was ethnically motivated, and see if the ethnic diversity is then a necessary condition instead. Bates’ point of view makes sense as he references Collier, whose reading we did earlier tried to show ethnic cleavages were exacerbated by economic motives.