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Research Paper No. 2092 Veterans, Organizational Skill and Ethnic Cleansing: Evidence from the Partition of South Asia
Saumitra Jha Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Steven Wilkinson Yale University January 2012
RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
Veterans, Organizational Skill and Ethnic Cleansing: Evidence from the Partition of South Asia
Saumitra Jha Stanford GSB Steven Wilkinson∗ Yale University
January 16, 2012
Abstract Can combat experience foster organizational skills that engender political collective action? We use the arbitrary assignment of troops to frontline combat in World War 2 to identify the effect of combat experience on two channels that change local ethnic composition and future political control: ethnic cleansing and co-ethnic immigration. During the Partition of South Asia in 1947, an environment where national borders were themselves endogenous to ethnic composition, we find that ethnically mixed districts whose veterans gained more combat experience exhibit greater co-ethnic immigration and ethnic cleansing. However, where ethnic groups had been in complementary economic roles or the minority received greater combat experience, there was relatively less minority ethnic cleansing. We interpret these results as reflecting the substitute roles of ethnic cleansing and co-ethnic immigration in altering local ethnic composition to gain political control and the role of combat experience in enhancing organizational skill that facilitates political collective action. Keywords: Veterans, Organization, Public Goods, Endogenous Borders, Conflict, Genocide, Civil War, Partition, Post-conflict reconstruction, Ethnic cleansing, Institutional change
1
Introduction
Shocks that enable non-elite groups to organize and credibly threaten violence fundamentally drive institutional change in many of the most influential theories of politics and development. The role of shocks to the organizational abilities of disenfranchised groups has long
Saumitra Jha Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Steven Wilkinson Yale University January 2012
RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
Veterans, Organizational Skill and Ethnic Cleansing: Evidence from the Partition of South Asia
Saumitra Jha Stanford GSB Steven Wilkinson∗ Yale University
January 16, 2012
Abstract Can combat experience foster organizational skills that engender political collective action? We use the arbitrary assignment of troops to frontline combat in World War 2 to identify the effect of combat experience on two channels that change local ethnic composition and future political control: ethnic cleansing and co-ethnic immigration. During the Partition of South Asia in 1947, an environment where national borders were themselves endogenous to ethnic composition, we find that ethnically mixed districts whose veterans gained more combat experience exhibit greater co-ethnic immigration and ethnic cleansing. However, where ethnic groups had been in complementary economic roles or the minority received greater combat experience, there was relatively less minority ethnic cleansing. We interpret these results as reflecting the substitute roles of ethnic cleansing and co-ethnic immigration in altering local ethnic composition to gain political control and the role of combat experience in enhancing organizational skill that facilitates political collective action. Keywords: Veterans, Organization, Public Goods, Endogenous Borders, Conflict, Genocide, Civil War, Partition, Post-conflict reconstruction, Ethnic cleansing, Institutional change
1
Introduction
Shocks that enable non-elite groups to organize and credibly threaten violence fundamentally drive institutional change in many of the most influential theories of politics and development. The role of shocks to the organizational abilities of disenfranchised groups has long
References: 37 North, Douglass, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast, Violence and social orders: a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history, Cambridge University Press, 2009 Native States % Target minorities, 1931 0 .1 20 40 30 50 -2 .1 .1 -3 .1 .1 0. -4 -5 -6 0. 0. 0. 0. 0 0 0 0 0 % Target minorities, 1951 (a) Target minorities, 1931 (b) Target minorities, 1951 Figure 1: Partition and the Religious Homogenization of the Indian subcontinent, 1931-1951 source: 1931, 1951 censuses of India and Pakistan and Bharadwaj et al # Hindu- Muslim Riots, 1850-1942 (deciles) 0 6 9 12 -7 1 -1 -2 6 1 2 3 4 5 8 (a) Hindu-Muslim Riots, 1850-1942 population (b) Average Combat Experience, 1940-45 Figure 2: Pre-War Violence and War-Time Combat Experience sources: (1) Based upon Wilkinson (2005) and the Times of London, 1850-1942