The Origins of Violence in Rwanda

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Heldring, Leander
• 署名单位: University of Bonn; Tilburg University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdaa028
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 730-763
• 关键词: economic-development; institutions; state; TECHNOLOGY; chronology; Burundi; stress; IMPACT

摘要

This article shows that the intensity of violence in Rwanda's recent past can be traced back to the initial establishment of its pre-colonial state. Villages that were brought under centralized rule one century earlier experienced a doubling of violence during the state-organized 1994 genocide. Instrumental variable estimates exploiting differences in the proximity to Nyanza-an early capital-suggest that these effects are causal. Before the genocide, when the state faced rebel attacks, with longer state presence, violence is lower. Using data from several sources, including a lab-in-the-field experiment across an abandoned historical boundary, I show that the effect of the historical state is primarily sustained by culturally transmitted norms of obedience. The persistent effect of the pre-colonial state interacts with government policy: where the state developed earlier, there is more violence when the Rwandan government mobilized for mass killing and less violence when the government pursued peace.