| Abstract: |
This paper provides new insights into the link between the experience of
violent conflict and local collective action. I use the temporal and
geographical information from four rounds of survey data from Nigeria to
relate measures of cooperation to past and future incidences of communal
conflict. I show that local collective action, measured in terms of community
meeting attendance and volunteering, is highest before the outbreak of
vio-lence – higher than both post-conflict levels and the generally lower
levels of cooperation in regions not affected by violence. I develop a
‘mobilisation mechanism’ to explain these findings, arguing that, rather than
being an indicator of ‘social capital’, collective action ahead of communal
violence is inherently ambiguous, and driven by a form of situational-ly
adaptive (and potentially aggressive) ‘solidarity with an edge’. I further
show that the positive link between previous exposure to civil war-type
violence and cooperation holds for Nigeria, too, but that it holds for rural
areas only. |