Contact hypothesis:

• If cooperative and egalitarian, social contact can reduce prejudice
• But: Real-world opportunities for contact in conflict settings often limited
• And: Even given opportunities, anxiety can lead to avoidance
• Mass media interventions as potential solution

Research question: Can media interventions improve intergroup relations in settings of horizontal contestation?

1. There is self-selection into media consumption

2. How to generate media content that resonates with audiences on both sides of deep social divide

3. How to deliver in a naturalistic way with broad reach

1. Self-selection into media consumption

   • Use experimental design to encourage subset of study subjects (N=1750) in conflict setting (Kaduna, Nigeria) to watch TV drama each week
     • Weekly reminders and incentivized quizzes to boost take-up

2. Create content that resonates across social divide

   • Work with local TV scriptwriters to design relatable storyline focused on transformative Christian-Muslim friendship

3. Deliver content in naturalistic way with broad reach

   • Embed storyline into 10 episodes of primetime show, “Dadin Kowa”

• Current focus on divisive effects of media
• But: Media interventions can reduce prejudice, threat perceptions and increase intergroup interaction in conflict setting
• Next stages: Study knock-on effects of greater acceptance by politically dominant groups for social inequalities

• Large-scale efforts to improve vertical citizen-state legibility across developing countries

• Example: introduction of biometric identity cards (eID)

• Two aspects of expansion of state capacity:

  • Improved service delivery
  • Greater scope for state surveillance

• Differential implications across social groups:

• Question: Does eID exacerbate existing intergroup inequalities, and if so, under what conditions?

1. Sampling and surveying marginalized populations
   

2. Explaining complex policy choices in an accessible way
   

3. Assessing actual effects of eID on political inequality

1. Sampling and surveying of marginalized populations

   • In-person survey in Kenya (N = 2073) with members of dominant (Kikuyu, Kalenjin), opposition (Luo), and securitized (Somali) groups

2. Explaining complex policy choices in an accessible way

   • Hypothetical policies highlighting different benefits and costs

3. Assessing effects of eID on political inequality

   • Policy conjoint experiment
   • Focus on heterogeneity in attitudes across groups
   • Implications for changes in group-level political behavior

• Overall: Citizens appreciate stronger link with government through eID
• But: Some evidence that particular groups may suffer from
  • Direct exclusion from access to service (securitized)
  • Indirect exclusion via reduced participation (opposition)
• Ambiguous effects for inequality

• How does horizontal contestation affect outcomes at the vertical level?

• Three forms of horizontal contestation: gender, group based, and the interaction between the two (intersectional discrimination)

• Vertical outcomes: How does discrimination affect the choice and quality of political representation?

• How are these moderated by institutional features commonly used to tackle discrimination?

  • Gender quotas
  • Information on ability
  • Collective choices

• Self-selection into candidacy
• Endogenous selection of institutions
• Mixed incentives

These all make causal inferences from observational patterns difficult

• We conduct a candidate choice experiment in Nairobi

• Participants were asked to pick candidates to perform a task

• Controlled setting features dual aspects of elections:

  • direct rewards to candidates for selection independent of quality
  • direct rewards to electors from selection conditional on quality

• Little evidence for causal interactions between ethnicity and gender
• Evidence that institutions moderate the relationship between contestation and candidate quality:
  • Quotas remove (in fact reverse) gender bias but weaken candidate quality
  • Information hurts women but improves candidate quality
  • Discussions remove only outgroup bias and improve candidate quality

Horizontal biases affect the quality of representation, but biases can be moderated by institutional context