Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:00:45.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines: Experimental Evidence from the Kenya–Tanzania Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2017

Sangick Jeon ,
Tim Johnson  and
Amanda Lea Robinson
Sangick Jeon
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher (Twitter: @sangickjeon), e-mail: [email protected]
Tim Johnson
Affiliation:
Grace and Elmer Goudy Associate Professor of Public Management and Policy Analysis, Center for Governance and Public Policy Research, Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University, e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Past research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment motivation from the motivation to rectify income inequality. While costly income adjustment in both games is driven primarily by norm violations and inequality aversion, the ethnic composition of groups also influences sharing and sanctioning behavior in Kenya but not Tanzania, consistent with documented differences in the strength of nationalism across the two countries. However, the way in which shared ethnicity affects sanctioning in Kenya—namely, increased punishment of out-group violations against in-group members—is at odds with theories that anticipate that costly sanctioning will primarily target coethnics.

Keywords

identitycooperationethnic diversitythird-party punishmentdictator gamerandom income game
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2017 

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

Authors' names appear in alphabetical order to reflect their equal contributions. This research was conducted with generous support from the Russell Sage Small Grants Program in Behavioral Economics, the Global Underdevelopment Action Fund at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. Valuable research assistance was provided by Chacha Maroa, Daniel Merengo, Geoffrey Ochieng, and Wango Chaula Wango. The Shirati Health, Education, and Development group and Kenyatta University provided research affiliations for this work. The research also benefited from helpful feedback at the 2013 Midwest Group in African Political Economy meeting. The research received ethical approval from Stanford University, the Kenyan National Council for Science and Technology and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology.

References

Afrobarometer. 2012. “Round 5 survey data.” (www.afrobarometer.org).Google Scholar
Barkan, Joel D. 1994. “Divergence and Convergence in Kenya and Tanzania: Pressures for Reform.” In Beyond Capitalism versus Socialism in Kenya and Tanzania, ed. Barkan, J. D.. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, Thomas, Götte, Lorenz, Gügler, Rahel, and Fehr, Ernst. 2012. “The Mentalizing Network Orchestrates the Impact of Parochial Altruism on Social Norm Enforcement.” Human Brain Mapping 33 (6): 1452–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bernhard, Helen, Fehr, Ernst, and Fischbacher, Urs. 2006. “Group affiliation and altruistic norm enforcement.” The American Economic Review 96 (2): 217–21.Google Scholar
Boyd, Robert and Richerson, Peter J.. 1992. “Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups.” Ethology and Sociobiology 13 (3): 171–95.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1988. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishing.Google Scholar
Dawes, Christopher T., Fowler, James H., Johnson, Tim, McElreath, Richard, and Smirnov, Oleg. 2007. “Egalitarian motives in humans.” Nature 446 (7137): 794–6.Google Scholar
Duncan, David B. 1955. “Multiple range and multiple f tests.” Biometrics, 11 (1): 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunning, Thad. 2012. Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. and Laitin, David D.. 1996. “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation.” American Political Science Review 90 (4): 715–35.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst and Fischbacher, Urs. 2003. “The Nature of Human Altruism.” Nature 425 (6960): 785–91.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst and Fischbacher, Urs. 2004. “Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms.” Evolution and Human Behavior 25 (2): 63–87.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst and Gächter, Simon. 2002. “Altruistic Punishment in Humans.” Nature 415 (6868): 137–40.Google Scholar
Gordon, Rayomnd G. Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. (http://www.ethnologue.com/). Dallas, TX: SIL International.Google Scholar
Grossman, Guy. 2011. “Lab-in-the-Field Experiments.” Newsletter of the APSA Experimental Section 2 (2): 13–19.Google Scholar
Habyarimana, James, Humphreys, Macartan, Posner, Daniel N., and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2007. “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision? American Political Science Review 101 (4): 709–725.Google Scholar
Habyarimana, James, Humphreys, Macartan, Posner, Daniel N., and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2009. Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action. New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, et al. 2006. “Costly Punishment Across Human Societies.” Science 312 (5781): 1767–70.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Elizabeth, McCabe, Kevin, and Smith, Vernon L.. 1996. “Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games.” American Economic Review 86 (3): 653–60.Google Scholar
McCauley, John F. and Posner, Daniel N.. 2015. “African Borders as Sources of Natural Experiments: Promise and Pitfalls.” Political Science Research and Methods 3 (2): 409–18.Google Scholar
Miguel, Edward. 2004. “Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania.” World Politics 56 (3): 327–362.Google Scholar
Miguel, Edward and Gugerty, Mary Kay. 2005. “Ethnic Diversity, Social Sanctions, and Public Goods in Kenya.” Journal of Public Economics 89 (11): 2325–68.Google Scholar
Richerson, Peter J. and Boyd, Robert. 2005 Not by Genese Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shinada, Mizuho, Yamagishi, Toshio, and Ohmura, Yu. 2004. “False Friends are Worse than Bitter Enemies: Altruistic Punishment of in-Group Members.” Evolution and Human Behavior 25 (6): 379–393.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Jeon et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Jeon et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 653.7 KB