The Impact of Citizenship Law on Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: VIOLENCE AND BELONGING: THE IMPACT OF CITIZENSHIP LAW ON VIOLENCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Anne Christine Frugé, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jóhanna Kristín Birnir, Department of Government and Politics Many countries in Africa are embroiled in heated debates over who belongs where. Sometimes insider/outsider debates lead to localized skirmishes, but other times they turn into minor conflict or even war. How do we explain this variation in violence intensity? Deviating from traditional explanations regarding democratization, political or economic inequality, or natural resources, I examine how nationality laws shape patterns in violence. Citizenship rules determine who is or is not a member of the national political community. Nationality laws formalize these rules, thus representing the legal bond between individuals and the state. Restrictive nationality laws increase marginalization, which fuels competition between citizenship regime winners and losers. This competition stokes contentious insider/outsider narratives that guide ethnic mobilization along the dual logics of threat and opportunity. Threats reduce resource levels and obstruct the exercise of rights. Opportunities provide the chance to reclaim lost resources or clarify nationality status. Other work explains conditions necessary for insider/outsider violence to break out or escalate from the local to the national level. I show that this violence intensifies as laws become more exclusive and escalates to war once an outsider group with contested foreign origins faces denationalization. Groups have contested foreign origins where the “outsider” label conflates internal and foreign migrants. Where outsiders are primarily in- migrants, it is harder to deny the group’s right to citizenship, so nationality laws do not come under threat and insider/outsider violence remains constrained to minor conflict. Using an original dataset of Africa’s nationality laws since 1989, I find that event frequency and fatality rates increase as laws become more restrictive. Through case studies, I explain when citizenship struggles should remain localized, or escalate to minor or major conflict. Next, I apply a nationality law lens to individual level conflict processes. With Afrobarometer survey data, I show that difficulty obtaining identity papers is positively correlated with the fear and use political violence. I also find that susceptibility to contentious narratives is positively associated with using violence to achieve political goals. Finally, I describe the lingering effects of a violent politics of belonging using original survey data from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. VIOLENCE AND BELONGING: THE IMPACT OF CITIZENSHIP LAW ON VIOLENCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA by Anne Christine Frugé Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee Professor Jóhanna Kristín Birnir, Chair Professor Ernesto Calvo Professor Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham Professor Patricio Korzeniewicz Professor John McCauley © Copyright by Anne Christine Frugé 2017 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the expertise and support of my committee at the University of Maryland. I am deeply grateful for their commitment to my academic career and professional success. Above all, I would like to thank my adviser, Jóhanna Birnir, for guiding me at every stage to make this project the best it could possibly be, and for demanding from me what I expected of myself. Her mentorship has truly been invaluable. I would also like to thank my second mentor, John McCauley, whose African politics course was so inspiring that I wrote a dissertation on the topic. I am deeply grateful for his encouragement and insightful feedback these past years. I thank Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham for her guidance and support on this project and others. Working with her has helped me find my voice as a scholar. I would also like to thank Ernesto Calvo for his contributions over the course of this research. At Maryland, I thank Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz for serving as the Dean’s Representative, and participants in the CIDCM Workshops for their comments. The research for this dissertation was generously funded by the University of Maryland. I thank the Centre de Recherche et de Formation sur le Développement Intégré (CREFDI) in Abidijan and the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD) in Accra for helping with my field work. I owe a special thanks to Michel Silwé, Dimitri Goubo, Kakra Adu, Newton Norviewu, Élisée Guiounou, Boni N’Guessan, Abel Gbala, Ishmael Ankomah, Sandra Brainnelle, and Maame Gyesiwa, and Stephane Koffi. I would also like to thank everyone who helped with my interviews. Finally, I thank Ya-Maila Bangura for her research assistance. Above all, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering encouragement. I dedicate this dissertation to them. I am immensely fortunate to have so much love and light in my life. To my parents, Christine and Ernest, whose compassion, perseverance, and dedication to others has been a lifelong inspiration to me. To Christopher, whom I admire for his wit and intellect. To Katherine, I say “lucky us”. And, of course, to Phillip: Thanks for being there on the best days and the less-than-best days. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ ii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... iii List of Tables.................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1. Citizenship Rules and the Structure of Belonging ........................................... 1 Politics of Belonging in the Literature ...................................................... 4 The Intersection of Nationality Law and Violence .................................... 7 Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................. 11 Chapter 2. Legislating Nationality ................................................................................. 16 The Contentious Foundations of Citizenship .......................................... 16 The Evolution of Citizenship in Sub-Saharan Africa .............................. 23 Theories on Political Violence................................................................ 30 Insiders and Outsiders ............................................................................ 43 Final Remarks ........................................................................................ 47 Chapter 3. A Theory of Violence and Belonging ............................................................ 49 The Citizenship-Violence Nexus ............................................................ 50 Escalation .............................................................................................. 56 Assumptions .......................................................................................... 58 Alternative Explanations ........................................................................ 63 Hypotheses ............................................................................................ 65 Final Remarks ........................................................................................ 69 iii Chapter 4. Nationality Laws and Violence Severity: Evidence from the African Citizenship Policy Index ................................................................................................ 75 A Empirical Exploration of Citizenship Policy ....................................... 75 Methodology and Measurement ............................................................. 77 Empirical Analysis ................................................................................. 92 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 102 Chapter 5. Nationality Laws and Civil War: Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo .................................................................................... 105 Côte d’Ivoire ........................................................................................ 110 The Democratic Republic of Congo ..................................................... 136 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 153 Chapter 6. The Wars that Never Happened: Evidence from Ghana and Kenya ............. 156 Ghana .................................................................................................. 158 Kenya .................................................................................................. 173 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 189 Chapter 7. Citizenship Security and Involvement in Violence: Evidence from 29 national surveys ........................................................................................................................ 191 Research Design .................................................................................. 194 Connecting Insecurity