Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Uppsala University, Department of Economics

No 2015:1: Preparing for Genocide: Community Work in Rwanda

Evelina Bonnier (evelina.bonnier@hhs.se), Jonas Poulsen (jonas.poulsen@nek.uu.se), Thorsten Rogall (thorsten.rogall@iies.su.se) and Miri Stryjan (miri.stryjan@iies.su.se)
Additional contact information
Evelina Bonnier: Stockholm School of Economics
Jonas Poulsen: Department of Economics, Postal: Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Thorsten Rogall: IIES
Miri Stryjan: IIES

Abstract: How do political elites prepare the civilian population for participation in violent conflict? We empirically investigate this question using village-level data from the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Every Saturday before 1994, Rwandan villagers had to meet to work on community infrastructure, a practice called Umuganda. This practice was highly politicized and, in the years before the genocide, regularly used for spreading political propaganda. To establish causality, we exploit cross-sectional variation in meeting intensity induced by exogenous weather fluctuations. We find that an additional rainy Saturday resulted in a five percent lower civilian participation rate in genocide violence. These results pass a number of indirect tests of the exclusion restriction as well as other robustness checks and placebo tests.

Keywords: Conflict; Rainfall

JEL-codes: D74; N47

40 pages, January 19, 2015

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