One Team One Nation Football Ethnic Identity And Conflict

Overview
The paper, “One Team, One Nation: Football, Ethnic Identity and Conflict in Africa” by Chauvin and Durante (2017) examines how the success of national football teams in important international competitions influences the strength of ethnic identification and inner-ethnic violence. The research is investigated on countries in sub-Saharan Africa by looking at the impact of victory the in national football team, particularly victories in the Africa Cup of Nations (ACN). From the data, it indicates that:
1. Individuals interviewed after the victory are less likely to report high level of ethnic identity than people who were interviewed before the victory. It means that national team victories are associated with a higher level of trust
There are already many pieces of literature that focus on the detrimental effect of ethnic diversions on various aspects of socio-economic development. Moreover, there are several papers showing sports a role in constructing a sense of national identity and improving relations between ethnic groups. Chauvin and Durante (2017) used previous work on determinants of ethnic identification by Eifert et al (2010) and Robinson (2014), which indicates that the strength of ethnic identification may be affected by political factor. However, due to data limitations and identification issues, it has been difficult to determine causation. Chauvin and Durante (2017) filled this gap by providing robust causal evidence that victories in competitive official games can have positive effect on national identity. Moreover, Chauvin and Durante (2017) relate these findings to previous work on the long-lasting effect of the historical and transitory event (i.e. slave trade) on contemporary trust
The author uses quasi-experimental variation to examine if a team qualified for the tournament phase of ACN decreases conflict within the country. The author used the history of ACN group stage. The author identified countries in the same group where all teams have a chance to be qualified even on the last match day. After the last match, countries that were barely qualified to ACN final were assigned as a treatment group and control group if countries barely did not make it. Then, the identification strategy is summarized by regression equation (3) on pg. 22. The author included different conflict intensity by adding dummies for a week since qualification (-25 to +25) see if the effect of the qualification