Local Leaders & Dispute Resolution Effectiveness: Evidence from Africa

Communal violence remains an enduring experience across many developing and developed states. Climate shocks, population growth and technological shifts have only increased pressures and strain on group relations, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa (Hsaiang et al. 2011; Burke et al. 2009; Hendrix and Salehyan 2012; Raleigh and Kniveton 2012; Miguel et al. 2004). Violence, irrespective of the cause, often sharpens existing ethnic and religious cleavages --- threatening the delicate ecosystem of diverse groups in many multi-ethnic states. In Nigeria, a state comprised of over 250 ethnic groups, violent outbreaks have increased in parallel with rising resource scarcity, largely between farmers and pastoralists. Pastoralists traveling southward -- fleeing violence and desertification in Northeast Nigeria -- has only augmented these tensions. Yet, an interesting pattern emerges across many communities. That is, while tensions are nearly ubiquitous, the outbreak of violence is not. What accounts for these pockets of peace that exist within areas of high tension and insecurity? This project explores this question by focusing on local leaders within the community. Local leaders -- traditional chiefs, religious, opinion, youth, and civic leaders -- all play a role in diffusing tensions and arbitrating disputes. Yet, the capacity for arbitration varies across time, space, and type of leader. I argue that these incentives and constraints stem, in part, from how embedded leaders are within their own communities and that of the out-group. In this case, the out-group is defined as the community with whom they conflict with most. With this in mind, I develop a theory that links the success of dispute arbitration to local leaders’ levels of in-group and out-group embeddedness. In other words, there is an inter-linked dynamic between in-group embeddedness (bonding social capital) and out-group embeddedness (bridging social capital). Broadly speaking, bonding social capital encapsulates the social ties and connections within one’s own group, while bridging social capital is the ties and networks that span across group lines (Putnam 2000). For certain leaders, there will be a trade-off between embeddedness within one’s own community and their ability and willingness to resolve disputes across group lines. Similarly, the extent to which a leader engages with out-group members can set up challenges with enforcement and compliance among their own community members. This study aims to examine the validity of this theory as well as to understand better the mechanisms that drive different behaviors across local leaders dealing with dispute abitration. My theory differs from existing research on social embeddedness and social ties by examining how in-group and out-group embeddedness interact and can produce both positive and negative incentives for peacebuilding. I focus, primarily, on the proximate causes of local leader capacity and dispute arbitration, acknowledging that important historical events have influenced the variation in current levels of embeddedness.