Manuel Vogt (University College London)

Work in Progress Seminars

Elite Networks and Political Conflict in Divided Societies

Abstract: Why are some divided countries able to maintain peace while others suffer from protracted violence? An influential literature emphasizes the importance of power sharing, but struggles to explain why elites engage in cooperative behavior in the first place. We argue that political leaders’ integration in elite networks shapes the degree of cooperation they receive from other elites and, by extension, their propensity to engage in political violence. Leveraging original micro-level data on the pre-independence elite of 18 African countries, we find, first, that individuals who were more centrally positioned in their country’s pre-independence elite network were more likely to receive state positions after independence. Second, network isolation combined with organizational links to non-elite constituencies increased individuals’ likelihood of political violence following independence. We find the same relationship between network isolation and civil conflict at the ethnic group level and provide evidence for an effect of seniority on elites’ network integration.