Ethnofederalism and Ethnic Voting

Abstract

We investigate how changes in the administrative-territorial structure affect ethnic voting. We present an event study design that exploits the 2010 constitutional reform in Kenya, which substantially increased the number of primary administrative regions. We find (i) strong evidence for a reduction in ethnic voting when administrative regions become less ethnically diverse and (ii) weak evidence for such a reduction when ethnic groups become less fragmented across regions. These results suggest that 'ethnofederal' reforms (leading to administrative borders that more closely follow ethnic boundaries) can mitigate ethnic politics in diverse countries.

Decentralization, Ethnic Fractionalization, and Public Services: Evidence from Kenyan Healthcare

“…By contrast, we study the provision of public health services, which enable us to look at the supply and demand side and therefore to shed light on alternative mechanisms than political accountability. Our work is finally closely linked to a recent working paper by Bluhm et al (2021) that also relies on the 2010 Kenyan constitutional reform to investigate how the associated redistricting of local administration impacted ethnic voting. Using a standard measure of regional ethnic fractionalization combined with a new measure of ethnic-group fragmentation across regions, they find that ethnofederalism (when local jurisdictions tend to be defined along ethnic groups borders, rather than across them) reduces the salience of ethnicity and the extent of ethnic voting in national politics.…”

Decentralization, Ethnic Fractionalization, and Public Services: Evidence from Kenyan Healthcare

“…Unlike these papers, our analysis doesn't study the splitting of a subset of existing political jurisdictions, but instead the wholesale creation of a new layer of governance across the country. Our work is closely linked to a recent working paper by Bluhm et al (2021) that uses the same 2010 Kenyan constitutional reform as us to investigate how the associated redistricting of local administration impacted ethnic voting. They find that ethnofederalism (when local jurisdictions tend to be defined along ethnic group borders, rather than across them) reduces the salience of ethnicity and the extent of ethnic voting in national politics.…”