Dispute Resolution in Heterogeneous Societies

We study legal pluralism in Ghana. We plan to implement a set of Facebook survey experiments in Kumasi, Ghana to (1) evaluate the causal effect of ethnic identity on the choice of dispute resolution forum and to (2) understand the mechanisms behind this effect. We will consider two possible explanations for our findings in Afrobarometer: (1) non-state dispute resolution mechanisms may be preferred to state dispute resolution mechanisms in disputes between coethnics and (2) non-state dispute resolution mechanisms may be preferred to state dispute resolution mechanisms for disputes that involve coethnics of the traditional leaders (chiefs). The experiments will test these hypotheses using vignettes of the hypothetical disputes by randomizing information about ethnicity of the disputants.