Local Ethnic Contact and Civil Conflicts

Details

Supervisors

Gomes, Joseph

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This paper examines empirically the impact of ethnolinguistic divisions on civil conflicts through the prism of local interactions. Adding the local-global complementarity from Desmet et al. (2020) to Esteban et al. (2012) framework on ethnic divisions, I measure how local interactions play a role in the intensity of conflict. A spatial resolution of 5 km by 5 km is used to capture the local component and I look attentively at the effects of ethnic polarization, fractionalization, and the local-global complementarity on conflict. I provide empirical evidence that an increase in local interactions with other groups increases the overall antagonism felt towards those groups in the society at large.