Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting: An Experimental Study of Cousinage in Mali Author(s): THAD DUNNING and LAUREN HARRISON Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 104, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 21-39 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27798538 Accessed: 16-12-2015 23:11 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. American Political Science Association and Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Political Science Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1 February 2010 doi: 10.1017/S0003055409990311 Cross-cuttingCleavages and EthnicVoting: An ExperimentalStudyof Cousinage inMali THAD DUNNING and LAUREN HARRISON YaleUniversity ocial scientists often attribute moderation of the political salience of ethnicity in ethnically di verse societies to the presence of cross-cutting cleavages?that is, to dimensions of identity or same have interest which members the ethnic diverse allegiances. Yet, es l^J group may of along is In this the causal article, we present experi timating effects of cross-cutting cleavages difficult. mental results that help explain why ethnicity has a relatively minor political role inMali, an ethni cally heterogeneous sub-Saharan African country in which ethnic identity is a poor predictor of vote choice and parties do not form along ethnic lines. We argue that the cross-cutting ties afforded by an informal institution called "cousinage" help explain the weak association between ethnicity and individual vote choice. The experimental research design we introduce may be useful inmany other /^t settings. Social scientists often attribute moderation of the political salience of ethnicity in ethnically di verse societies to the presence of cross-cutting is, to dimensions of identity or inter cleavages?that est along which members of the same ethnic group may have diverse allegiances (Dahl 1956; Lipset and Rokkan individuals who are members 1967). When of the same group or social category on one dimen sion of interest or identity, such as ethnicity, are mem bers of different groups on another dimension, such as social class, their competing interests on the second dimension may undercut their primary allegiance to interests arising on the first dimension. Cross-cutting cleavages can thereby inhibit the extent to which po litical alignments intensify along any single dimension. As the sociologist Lewis Coser (1956, 72) once put it, "The interdependence of antagonistic groups and the Thad Dunning isAssociate Professor, Department ence, Yale University, P.O. Box 208301, New Haven, of Political Sci CT 06520-8301 (thad.dunning@yale.edu). Lauren Harrison is a graduate of Yale College, Class of 2009. We are grateful for helpful advice from David Freedman, Don Green, Dominika Koter, and Ken Scheve, as well as useful com ments from Adam Berinsky, Taylor Boas, Dawn Brancati, Michael Brian Crisp, Alberto Bratton, Michael Coppedge, Diaz-Cayeros, Jessica Gottlieb, Fran Hagopian, Macartan Humphreys, Nate Jensen, Matt Kirwin, Karen Long Jusko, Stephen Krasner, David Laitin, Scott Mainwaring, Chappell Lawson, Gabe Lenz, Beatriz Magaloni, Marc Meredith, Ryan Moore, Melissa Nobles, Sunita Parikh, Jean Jonathan Rodden, Guillermo Norman Peltier, Rosas, Philippe Schofield, Naunihal Singh, Margit Tavits, Mike Tomz, Rob Walker, and participants in seminars at theMassachusetts Institute of Tech Institute at the University of Notre Dame, nology, the Kellogg Stanford University, Washington in St. Louis, and the University first meeting of the network on Experiments in Governance and Politics held at Yale. We are especially (EGAP) grateful to the and to Daniel reviewers co Treisman and APSR anonymous editors for their helpful comments. Jean-Louis Bourgeois, Bamadou Mamadou Mohamed Abdoul Karim Diallo, Doumbia, Keita, Soumano, Amadou Tour?, and Kassim Traor? graciously facilitated our work inMali, while Amara Bidanis and Idrissa Keita provided research assistance. Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies and theMacMillan Center for International and Area Studies pro vided financial support. This research was approved by Yale's Human under IRB protocol #0807003989. A previous Subjects Committee as Afrobarometer version of this article appeared Working Paper 107. crisscrossing within such societies of conflicts, which serve to 'sew the social system together' by canceling each other out, thus prevent disintegration along one primary line of cleavage."1 A recent literature in comparative politics and po litical economy has extended this classic insight in a number of ways. Where ethnicity has multiple dimensions?for example, when language, race, reli gion, caste, or clan can each provide the basis for different ethnic identities?the way inwhich different identities interact can explain whether political conflict becomes entrenched along any single ethnic dimen sion, as well as which dimension of ethnic identity is politically salient (Chandra 2005; Laitin 1986; Posner 2004a, 2005). A rich theoretical literature suggests that the degree to which cleavages are cross cutting may affect individual vote choice and coalition forma tion (Rogowski 1989), patterns of party competition (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Roemer, Lee, and van der Staeten 2007), and other outcomes of interest to stu dents of comparative politics. By limiting the poten tial for electoral alignments to intensify along any one dimension of identity or interest, cross-cutting cleav ages may even promote the stability and persistence of democracy (Chandra 2005; Lipset 1959, 31, 88-9). Yet, estimating the causal effects of cross-cutting cleavages is difficult. Cross-country comparisons can be problematic because a country's cleavage structure may be related tomany confounding factors thatmight also explain patterns of ethnic politics. Analysts must also take care to isolate the separate influences of dif ferent dimensions of identity. In addition, itmay be or inter difficult to define the relevant manipulation vention, the impact of which we want to estimate.2 studies are thus challenged to isolate the Empirical causal effects of those aspects of the cleavage structure that are, in principle, subject tomanipulation. 1 The idea has a distinguished history. See Allardt and Littunen 1964, Dahl 1956,1982, Dahrendorf 1959, Lipset 1959, Lipset and Rokkan 1969. 1967, Simmel 1955, or Taylor and Rae 2 accounts of causation obviously ex Although nonmanipulationist ist, causal inference often involves specifying the hypothetical ma nipulation, the effects of which we want to estimate (Cochran 1955). 21 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting_February 2010 In this article, we present experimental results that help explain why ethnicity appears to have little polit sub ical salience inMali, an ethnically heterogeneous Saharan African country inwhich ethnic identity is a poor predictor of vote choice and parties do not form along ethnic lines. The apparent absence of ethnic vot ing inMali constitutes an important puzzle. Previous survey evidence suggests that ethnic identification is highly socially salient inMali, as does our own research. Yet, unlike many other sub-Saharan African countries, inMali, the social importance of ethnicity does not translate into a strong observed association between ethnicity and voters' electoral choices. We show that the cross-cutting ties afforded by an informal institution called "joking kinship" or "cousi nage" can help explain the limited political salience of ethnic identity inMali. During theMali Empire (1230 to c. 1600), families formed alliances on the basis of patronyms (i.e., surnames); today, in countries such as current-day Mali, as well as S?n?gal, The Gambia, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, these historical alliances are invoked in everyday social interactions. The cross cutting nature of cousinage and coethnic tiesmay well explain the weak relationship between ethnicity and voter choice inMali and several other countries. Imag ine two voters from the same ethnic group and a politi cian who comes from a different ethnic group. If a cousinage alliance exists between the politician and one of the voters but not the other, and ifvoters prefer their joking cousins as well as their coethnics, the relative attractiveness of the candidate to the two voters may diverge. In the aggregate, the cross-cutting nature of ethnic and cousinage tiesmay weaken the correlation between ethnicity and political preferences. To test this hypothesis, we developed an experimen tal research design that isolates the effects of different dimensions of candidate identity on voter preferences. In brief, we showed videotaped political speeches to experimental subjects in Bamako, Mali's capital, and then asked subjects to evaluate the quality of the speech, as well as various attributes of the candidate giving the speech. The content of speeches viewed by each subject was identical; the experimental manipu lation consisted of what subjects were told about the surname conveys in politician's last name. Because formation about both ethnic identity and cousinage ties inMali, varying the politician's last name allowed us to vary the treatment along two dimensions: the ethnic relationship of the politician and the subject (same ethnicity/different ethnicity) and their cousinage relationship (joking cousins/not joking cousins). The experimental design thus allows us to compare, for example, subjects' evaluations of cousins from a dif ferent ethnic group and noncousins from their own ethnic group, while holding constant the content of the speech and any fixed effects associated with the candidate. We find that cousinage alliances do affect candidate evaluations in the anticipated direction. Politicians who are cousins are evaluated more favorably than politi cians who are noncousins. In contrast to previous ob servational survey evidence, we also find that subjects favor coethnics over politicians from a different eth nic group. However, we show that cousinage alliances counteract the negative impact of ethnic differences on candidate evaluations. For example, subjects' evalua tions of candidates who are cousins from a different ethnic group are statistically indistinguishable from their evaluations of candidates who are noncousins from their own ethnic group. Our data and field research allow us to test further our core hypothesis and to evaluate the external valid ityof our findings.We show, first, that cousinage links and between voters and politicians are widespread so to in coethnic ties, they pro frequency comparable vide a plausible counterweight to ethnic linkages. Sec ond, cousinage alliances are politically salient. In our experiment, the effects of cousinage are strongest for politically active subjects, and our analysis of electoral data suggests that parties exploit cousinage relations when choosing candidates to place on party lists.Third, we demonstrate that although ethnic and cousinage ties both positively affect voters' evaluations of candidates, there is a negative correlation between cousinage and coethnicity (in the sense that coethnics are more likely to be noncousins than cousins, and non-coethnics are at least as likely to be cousins as noncousins); thus, the omission of cousinage ties from analyses of obser vational survey data should indeed suppress the true positive effect of coethnicity on political preferences. Fourth, although we cannot adjudicate between all mechanisms thatmight explain why voters prefer their cousins and their coethnics, we show that subjects deem their cousins to be more trustworthy than noncousins; cousinage relations appear to influence voters' expec to their de tations about politicians' responsiveness mands. Finally, we contrast the limited political salience of ethnicity in the several countries formerly under the authority of theMali Empire, where cousinage is practiced, with ethnicity's more pronounced political role in other countries, also formerly part of French West Africa, that lack cousinage. Of course, we do not suggest that cousinage necessarily constitutes the only reason ethnicity is not associated with vote choice inMali. Our experimental research simply shows that cousinage has a causal effect on candidate preferences and that it helps offset the effects of coethnicity? something not easily inferred from the existing evidence. Although some features of our research design are best suited to the study of cousinage and ethnic poli tics inMali and elsewhere inWest Africa, the exper iment we introduce can be used to study the effects of cross-cutting cleavages in other settings. Our arti as well as cle therefore constitutes a methodological substantive contribution, complementing recent pio neering research inwhich experiments have been used to study such topics as the relationship between ethnic diversity and public goods provision (Habyarimana, Humphreys, Posner, and Weinstein 2007) or how clien telism shapes voter behavior (Wantchekon 2003). Our expectation is that replication of the experimental de sign we introduce here will prove useful in other set tings as well. 22 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American Political Science Review_Vol 104, No. 1 ETHNICITYAND COUSINAGEAS CROSS-CUTTINGCLEAVAGES INMALI Ethnicity is a highly relevant dimension of social iden tity inMali. The West African country is ethnically diverse. It has more than 12 linguistically defined ethnic groups, and its ethnolinguistic fractionalization score of .84,which measures the probability that two individuals selected at random will come from different linguisti the score of cally defined ethnic groups, approaches ethnically diverse countries such as Kenya (.89) and Nigeria (.85) (Alesina et al. 2003, 184-9). In Afro barometer surveys taken in 2001 and 2002, respectively, 40% and 37% of respondents said they belonged "first and foremost" to their ethnic group. These percent ages are higher than for any other category, including religion, occupation, or gender, and they exceed the average of 31% for nine other African countries sur an Afro veyed (Eifert,Miguel, and Posner 2007,8). In barometer survey taken in 2005, 76% of respondents said they felt "some" or "a lot" of confidence in people from their own ethnic group, whereas just 54% said the same of other ethnic groups (Afrobarometer 2007, 51). Different regions of Mali are identified with and populated by particular ethnic groups, and although tends to be well integrated, the capital of Bamako are nonetheless associated with many neighborhoods ethnic particular groups.3 Yet, despite the social importance of ethnic identi fication inMali, ethnicity is not highly salient politi cally. In contrast to many other sub-Saharan African countries, ethnicity has not provided a strong basis for individual vote choice or party competition inMali since the country's return to democracy in 1992. Dowd and Driessen (2008, 6-8) calculate a measure of asso ciation between individual ethnicity and party identifi cation, and find thatMali has one of the lowest scores among the seventeen African countries surveyed (see also Norris and Mattes 2003,25). Posner (2004b), using country reports and other sources to code how often ethnicity ismentioned as a basis for party formation or political identity, creates a Politically Relevant Ethnic fractionalization index. Mali's PREG Group (PREG) score ranks far below countries with similar levels of inMali of ethnolinguistic fractionalization. Cabinets ten include ministers from various ethnic groups, and Mali lacks ethnic parties in the sense of Chandra (2004, 3): parties do not portray themselves as "the champion of a particular ethnic group or category to the exclusion of others" or "make such a strategy central to [their] strategy to mobilize voters." Thus, even as African ists have begun to reevaluate the presumed influ ence of ethnicity on voting behavior elsewhere in sub Saharan Africa (Basedau and Stroh 2009; Bratton and and Ford 2007; Erdmann Kimenyi 2008; Cheeseman 2007; Lindberg and Morrison 2008; Norris and Mattes 2003; Posner and Simon 2002), Mali still stands out as a clear regional outlier. What explains the apparently negligible political role of ethnicity inMali? The cross-cutting ties afforded an important role, as by cousinage alliances may play Malian politicians, scientists, anthropologists, political have all pointed out.4 and the U.S. State Department Cousinage, sometimes called "joking kinship," has ex isted inwhat is now the country ofMali since at least the time of theMali Empire.5 Under the rule of the emperor Sundiata Keita (c. 1235-1255), joking rela tions between subjects of the empire who bore cer tain patronyms6 (which were often identified with oc cupational specializations) were officially sanctioned.7 was a "Kurukan Fuga"?which Article 6 of Keita's set of prescriptions for how theMali Empire should that cousinage "is be organized and governed?stated Mandenkas the instated among [subjects of (hereafter) theMali Empire]. By consequence, no difference born between these groups can degenerate, the respect of the other being the rule" (Kouyat? 2003). According to several scholars, the stated purpose of institution alizing cousinage was to "defend, with language, the peace and harmony within the empire" (Kouyat? 2003, 58). Just as constructivist scholars have argued with re 2000), then, spect to ethnic identities (e.g., Nobles cousinage was originally codified and reinforced by the state. Although joking alliances were described administrators (Arcin 1906; Humblot by colonial 1918; Molini? 1959) and anthropologists (Mauss 1928; Radcliffe-Brown 1940) in the preindependence period, there appears to be little information about the im pact of colonialism on this social practice. Unlike other institutions that provided a greater basis formobiliz ing challenges to colonial rule, colonists apparently did not seek to restructure cousinage relations.8 Since in dependence, however, and especially after the return to democracy inmany countries in the 1990s, official tributes organized by governments inMali, S?n?gal, and elsewhere have celebrated cousinage as a source of interethnic understanding, which may again under score the role of the state in reinforcing this institution (Canut 2006). Although our main goal in this article is to estimate the political effects of cousinage and not to explain the origins or persistence of this institution, 4 See, inter alia Delafosse 1912, Mauss 1958, Radcliffe 1928, Pageard Brown 1940; more recently, Canut and Smith 2006, Davidheiser 2006, 837, Douyon 2006, Galvan 2009, 2006, Launay 2006, Lieberman O'Bannon of State 2003. 2008, Smith 2006, and U.S. Department 5 The standard French terms used to describe this institution include and "parent? a plaisanterie" "cousinage" (joking kinship); the term in the local language of Bambara. is "senankunya" 6We use "last name," and "surname" interchangeably "patronym," in this article; the first term ismost widely used in the anthropological literature on cousinage. 7 to oral historians, alliances between patronyms existed According even before Sundiata Keita's time; however, Keita codified and sanc 3 For instance, one of our interviewees gave examples of ten neigh each of which was identified with a borhoods (quartiers) of Bamako, different ethnic group (field interview Mamadou Keita, October 14, tioned the practice (Noumoussa Kante, 12, 2008, interview, October Bamako). 8 thus contrasts with other institutions, such as Sufi broth Cousinage erhoods or the Fon aristrocracy, where the French sought to reor Koter, personal ganize traditional authority structures (Dominika 2008, Bamako). correspondence, July 2009). 23 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting_February 2010 it is nonetheless important to understand the political incentives thatmay underlie this cultural equilibrium.9 Today cousinage alliances exist not only inMali, but also in other places that were either under the au thority of theMali Empire, such as S?n?gal (Galvan 2006; O'Bannon (Kouyat? 2003), The 2008), Guinea Faso (Sissao and Burkina Gambia (Davidheiser 2006), or im substantial have since that experienced 2002), migration from these areas, such as the northern Ivory is and Niger. Cousinage Coast, southern Mauritania, it not practiced everywhere inWest Africa. Although occurs inmany parts of theWestern Sahel zone, coun tries located along theGulf of Benin, such as Togo and Benin, lack cousinage. There is also some variance in practice within countries where cousinage does exist. in northern Mali For example, the Tuareg (Tamasheq) in S?n?gal do not appear to have exten and theDiola sive surname-based joking alliances with members of their own or other ethnic groups.10 However, cousinage is practiced almost everywhere else inMali, and joking kinships occur between and among members of most of the country's 12 largest ethnic groups.11 Today, if someone inMali with the last name ofKeita (a surname from theMalink? ethnic group) meets someone named Coulibaly (a surname from theBambara ethnic group), these two joking cousins may insult each other with a standard set of jokes, even if they have never met. It may be tempting to think of cousinage alliances as themselves being ethnic ties, yet this does not seem appropriate. Although common descent is often taken to be a defining feature of ethnic identity (Chandra 2006; Weber 1978), sharing a surname inMali only (2006, loosely implies common descent. As Launay 767-8) explains, "in a large community, it is not uncom mon for two entirely unrelated descent groups to share the relationship of senankunya the same patronym... all locality, linking all peo transcends [cousinage] ple who share one name with all people who share another."12 Cousinage relationships therefore provide a distinct form of identity; they are not simply an ex tension of ethnicity. Cousinage relations imply a social bond between par ties to the alliance, that is,between joking cousins. At least historically, there was often hierarchy involved in these relationships, with one patronym in a pair of cousins associated with a higher caste (say, the caste 9 We refer to cousinage as an institution in the sense of Greif (2006, norms and organiza 30): "An institution is a system of rules, beliefs, tions that together generate a regularity of social behavior." 10 on some accounts, the Diola have cousinage relations However, the geographic with the Sereer (see O'Bannon 2008, 9-10). Again, and political reach of theMali Empire seems important in explaining which groups practice cousinage; for example, the Tuareg, who speak a Berber language, were not subjects of the empire. 11 Ethnic groups in Mali include the Bambara/Bamanan (an es Peulh/Fula of the national timated 26% (14%), population), Sonrhai (7%), (9%), Maninka/Malink? (10%), Sonink?/Sarakol? (3%), Khasonk? (3%), Mianka Dogon (6%), Bobo (3%), S?noufo (1%), among others (Afrobarometer (2%), Tuareg (2%), and Bozo 2007, 51). 12 in Bamako may be ethnically identified, Although neighborhoods we have not found evidence that cousins tend to live near each other. this point is challenging to evaluate empirically. However, of nobles) than the other.13 Part of the point of cousi nage appears to be precisely that the leveling influ ence of joking subverts hierarchies of power, at least com temporarily.14 For instance, cousins sometimes to "slave" each other their call pete (esclave); dietary customs may be denigrated through comments such as "you eat beans" (Canut and Smith 2006; Jones 2007). Although such jokes are formulaic, they are also re formulated to diffuse social tensions or to advance particular aims in ways that are situation dependent. Jones (2007,72) recounts an instance inwhich a certain M. Traor? asked for the surname of an administrative office worker, who was taking a long time with the preparation of paperwork; on learning that theworker was a joking cousin, Traor? said, "You must work faster. You are doing thework of your master." Some typical jokes imply possession or dominance, through phrases such as "you are my daughter/son" (often uttered by a younger joking cousin to an older one) or "I made you, and God made the others" (Jones 2007,75). Other stan dard jokes are simpler, mocking insults such as "Your name isworthless," "Your name is something found in the street," or simply "Keita (insert other name) is bad" Joking (said by the Coulibaly/other joking cousin). kinship alliances thus allow the establishment of rap port and permit a degree of frankness between cousins thatmay not otherwise exist in social relationships. relations are also said to imply a set of Cousinage reciprocal obligations. As one ethnic Senoufo intervie wee told us, he could "never hurt his cousin" and would "have to do what his cousin asks," a sentiment shared and by other interviewees as well.16 Anthropologists other scholars have alleged that joking kinship may "re sult in greater willingness tomake voluntary material sacrifices (of resources, time,willingness to voluntarily cede in disputes, etc.) for people thought to belong to different groups" (Galvan 2006, 816-17). These bonds of obligation can have real practical consequences. relations may be invoked to avoid payment Cousinage of traffic tickets, extract concessions from bureaucrats, speed up (or avoid) the payment of taxes, and for other purposes (see Canut and Smith 2006; Jones 2007). As we discuss further below, the ability to procure special favors from one's joking cousins may play an important role in explaining the political impact of cousinage. This does not imply, of course, that the establish ment of greater rapport or trust through cousinage re lations is automatic. As many cultural anthropologists and sociologists emphasize, although social practices such as cousinage typically involve a set of persistent to an that structure behavior, habits parties 13 ties are not transitive: ifA is a cousin of B and B is a Cousinage cousin of C, A and C are not necessarily cousins. 14For on a flight from Paris to Ba businessman example, a Malian to one of the authors (Dunning) that employees mako complained who are his joking cousins feel free to insult and make special de mands of him. Such anecdotes suggest that the leveling of hierarchy remains an important aspect of the social institution. 15 rather than formulaic; whatever Many insults are extemporaneous the nature of the joke, the key point is that joking reinforces the relationship between the speakers. cousinage 16 Interview Mamadou 8, 2008, Bamako. Sonogo, October 24 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American Political Science Review exchange must also choose Vol. 104, No. 1 to invoke these relation ships (Bourdieu 1992).As Launay (2006,95, 99) puts it, "joking [between cousins] has constantly to be are either delib instantiated_Such relationships... or instantiated voluntarily by one or erately staged... both parties. For there to be a joking relationship, someone actually has to do the joking." We do not a positive impact of cousinage on inter presuppose trust. Indeed, our experiment is designed to personal allow us to evaluate empirically the political effects of this social institution, whatever they may be. We also recognize that the nature of cousinage relation ships may change over time, with even the set of sur name pairs that constitute joking cousins subject to transformation.17 However, cousinage alliances consti tute "social facts," which are difficult for any individual to alter. At any given point in time, there exists an understanding about who can joke with whom, and the ability to invoke cousinage alliances is constrained by the surnames of the parties doing the joking.18 In Mali, surnames imply a set of cross-cutting ethnic and cousinage ties. It is therefore important to empha size the specificity of the social institution we study. Although many anthropologists have examined sim ilar "joking kinship alliances" in other settings (see Radcliffe-Brown 1940), theymay not involve the cross cutting ties that characterize cousinage inMali.19 What, then, is the political role of this social in stitution? Our field research and the secondary liter ature suggest that Malian politicians employ cousi nage relations to serve their electoral objectives. A deputy in theNational Assembly told one of us (Dun ning) that he uses cousinage alliances to establish rap port and "win the loyalty" of non-coethnic voters in current president, Amadou his constituency.20 Mali's Toumani Tour?, often refers in speeches to his joking cousins (Douyon 2006, 899). The president is fortu nate that his surname grants him alliances with voters bearing common patronyms from at least four ethnic the Coulibaly (ethnic Bamanans), the groups?namely, the Keita and the Sissoko Maiga (ethnic Songhais), and the Guindo (ethnic Malink?s), (ethnic Dogons). Thus, Tour? can invoke cousinage relations nearly 17 even allege a cousinage Some observers "growth industry," in which more and more surname pairs have come to be considered cousins (Douyon 2006). We discuss the challenges this posed to our experimental design further below. 18 Launay (2006, 799) suggests that "the question of which jamu in [patronym] actually jokes with whom is subject to considerable determinacy. Lists of the joking partners of any given jamu may vary from community to community, or even from individual speaker to there is often a clear understanding about speaker." Nonetheless, which surname pairs comprise for "classic" cousins, particularly cousins such as the Keita and the Coulibaly. 19 is sometimes de Joking between grandparents and grandchildren scribed as "senankunya," term for cousinage the Bambara (Jones 2007). We focus on alliances between particular patronyms, how because these cross-cut ethnic ever, groups and could therefore limit the observed conceivably relationship between ethnicity and vote choice. 20 This deputy from theMalink? ethnic group reported using cousi in a village inhabited nage ties to establish rapport while campaigning named Samak?, who are his joking cousins by many ethnic Bambaras 12, 2008, Lanceni Balla Keita, Bamako). (interview, October wherever he travels in the country. Douyon (2006,899) also notes that "numerous candidates in the legisla tive or municipal elections have solicited the vote of their senankun allies [their cousins], who are manip ulated more easily than (even) direct relatives" (see also Canut 2006).21 Interestingly, politicians sometimes find ways to extend the range of cousinage relations to which they can legitimately appeal politically, for and pater example, by drawing on both maternal nal patronyms (Douyon 2006, 896-7). Finally, where deputies or other politicians come from a minority or nondominant ethnic group in a given constituency, they appear to enjoy particularly widespread cousinage re lations with voters in the consituency. In Gao, which is ethnically nearly 75% Sonrhai, the president of the re gional assembly is ethnically Dogon, an extreme minor ity comprising well under 5% of the population in that this politician's surname (Guindo) region. However, affords him cousinage relations with themost common Sonrhai patronyms (e.g.,Maiga, Ciss?, Tour?).22 If politicians strategically exploit cousinage in their electoral campaigns, then these relationships should presumably also shape the preferences of individ ual voters. Several studies allege that voters prefer their cousins and even suggest why they would do so. Douyon (2006, 899), for example, claims that "voters tend to vote for their allies (cousins), saying that in case of problems?administrative, political, or social? the elected ally would be more prompt to intervene than he would be even with a direct member of his own family." Other scholars have referred to the role of joking kinships in limiting the political salience of eth nicity in several West African countries (see Lieberman to our knowledge, our re 2009, 277-8). Nevertheless, search supplies the first rigorous empirical test of the proposition that cousinage shapes political preferences. Most important, it allows us to assess how the cross cutting ethnic and cousinage ties interact, and thereby may inhibit the crystallization of political preferences along ethnic lines. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN To measure the effect of cousinage on voter prefer ences, we showed videotaped political speeches to ex perimental subjects, who were recruited through door to-door canvassing in almost all neighborhoods in the were can of Bamako. told that the capital city Subjects didate in the video was a political independent who was considering launching a campaign for deputy in the National Assembly.23 In all 824 experimental tri als, we asked subjects to evaluate the overall quality of the speech and the attractiveness of the candidate 21 from the original French; all translations are ours, un Translated less otherwise noted. 22 Kassim 8 and 22, December Traor?, personal communication, 2008. 23 Mali has a multiparty democracy with direct elections for president and list-based elections in single- or multimember for constituencies seats in the National Assembly. 25 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting February 2010 TABLE 1. ExperimentalDesign: Subjects Assigned to Treatment and Control Subject and politician are jokingcousins N= 136 Subject and politician are fromthe same ethnic group N = 124 Subject and politician are fromdifferent ethnic groups Politician's lastname not given Subject and politician have the same last Conditions Subject and politician are not jokingcousins N= 122 N= 152 Control conditions N = 132 N = 158 name along various dimensions. The content of speeches viewed by all subjects was identical. The experimen talmanipulation consisted of what subjects were told about the politician's last name, which conveys infor mation about both ethnic identity and cousinage ties in Mali. Our experimental design had six treatment and control conditions. In the four treatment conditions shown in the top two rows of Table 1, the subject and the politician are, respectively, joking cousins from the same ethnic group (N = 136); noncousins from the same ethnic group (N = 122); joking cousins from dif ferent ethnic groups (N = 124); or noncousins from different ethnic groups (N = 152). We also added two additional control conditions to the experimental de sign (bottom rows of Table 1). In the fifth condition, subjects were not provided with information about the politician's last name, and thus received no information about their ethnic and cousinage ties to the politician = (N 132). Adding thisfifth condition therefore allows us to estimate treatment effects relative to this baseline candidate evaluation. Finally, in the sixth condition, the = politician had the same last name as the subject (N are such also noncousins Of course, 158). politicians from the subject's own ethnic group (because cousi nage alliances occur between patronyms, and because last name indicates ethnicity); thus, this final control condition in one sense coincides with the coethnic, noncousin treatment condition.24 However, adding this additional condition allows us to compare treatment ef fects stemming from cousinage or coethnicity to a sim ple sameness or clan effect.Experimental subjects were assigned at random to these six treatment and control conditions with equal probability, using a computer integers between 1 and generated listof pseudorandom 6 (inclusive). 24 Our evidence supports this assertion. Among subjects assigned to view a speech by a politician with the same last name, 98% said the 90% said the politician was a politician was not a cousin, whereas coethnic. To assign subjects at random to the treatment and control conditions, we needed a way to expose each subject to the appropriate stimulus?that is, to a politi cian's patronym that corresponds to the relevant cell of Table 1, for a given subject surname. To do this, we reviewed the secondary literature and conducted interviews with experts on cousinage, as well as or informants in Bamako. We then cata dinary Malian surnames the associated with each treatment logued condition formore than 200 subject surname-ethnicity combinations.25 This allowed us to create a largematrix inwhich each row corresponds to a Malian last name thatwe could expect to encounter in the field and each column gives politicians' surnames associated with the appropriate treatment or control condition.26 We used two small experiments (N = 42 and N = 169, respec tively) to test a preliminary version of our matrix. In conjunction with further qualitative interviews in the field, these smaller experiments allowed us to create and refine the random assignment matrix used in the larger experiment reported in this article. Although several secondary sources describe cousinage alliances between various patronyms, we do not know of any previous mapping that is as comprehensive as our ran dom assignment matrix. Table 2 shows a typical row of our matrix, this one for a subject named Keita who is from the Malink? ethnic group. The columns of (also known asManinka) Table 2 give the politicians' surnames associated with each of the six treatment and control conditions, for such a subject. For example, politicians with the sur names in the first two columns are coethnics of the subject; however, those in the first column (Sissoko and Konat?) are considered cousins of the Keita, whereas are not. The surnames those in the second (Dian?) in the third and fourth columns, meanwhile, are asso ciated with other (non-Malink?) ethnic groups, some of which are cousins of the Keita (third column) and some of which are not (fourth column). In cells with multiple entries, such as in the first, third, and fourth columns in Table 2, the politician's last name was se lected at random from the names listed in the cell. The surnames included in each column are not intended to be exhaustive; for instance, the first and third columns of thematrix do not include all possible cousins for this subject surname. Rather, we sought to use politician surnames for which cousinage links are well under stood and widely recognized, so that we could accu the stimuli to which subjects were rately manipulate exposed. One important question iswhether we were in fact able to manipulate subjects' perceptions of their eth nic and cousinage ties to politicians. This is important because we ultimately care about how subjects' per ceptions of these ties to politicians shape candidate 25 last name usually implies a single ethnicity inMali (as Although encounter implied by our experimental design), one will occasionally exceptions. In each row of our matrix, we thus specified the subject's ethnicity and surname. 26 The random assignment matrix and other experimental materials are posted online at http://research.thaddunning.com. 26 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Vol. 104,No. 1 American Political Science Review TABLE 2. Typical Row ofOur Random Assignment Matrix (1) Subject's Coethnic/ Cousin Surname (Ethnicity) Keita (Maninka) 1. Sissoko 2. Konat? (2) Coethnic/ Not Cousin (6) (3) (4) (5) Not Coethnic/ Cousin 1. Dian? 1. Doucour? 2. Sacko 3. Sylla 4. Coulibaly 5. Tour? Not Coethnic/ Not Cousin No Name Same Name 1. Diallo 2. Ciss? 3. Dambel? 4. Th?ra 5. Tour? 6. Togola Pas de nom Keita 7. Watarra evaluations. In some cases, we were concerned that we risked misclassifying the stimuli to which subjects perceived themselves to be exposed. As a manipula tion check, we therefore asked subjects to identify the ethnicity of the politician in the videotape and also whether the politician was a joking cousin of the sub ject. (We did this only after subjects had answered all questions related to the treatment.) Subjects perceived both the politician's ethnic iden tity and their cousinage ties to the politician with sub stantial accuracy. First, given only the politician's last name and choosing from more than 14 ethnic cate gories, subjects correctly classified the politician's eth nicity more than 80% of the time. In the control con dition in which no politician surname was provided, subjects' guesses roughly tracked the distribution of ethnic groups inBamako. Next, when assigned to view a speech by a politician from a different ethnic group, subjects correctly classified the politician as a cousin or a noncousin nearly 85% of the time. Subjects more often misclassified their cousinage ties to politicians from their own ethnic group (in particular, theymore often classified coethnic cousins as noncousins than they did coethnic, noncousins as cousins). As a sub stantive matter, the direction of the misclassification may serve to emphasize that cousinage alliances are typically understood to cut across ethnic groups.27 We recruited experimental subjects by approaching men and women sitting outside homes (or knocking on doors) and asking if they would participate in a on several study on political speeches. Distributions measured variables in the experimental population, such as ethnicity and age, are similar to those given for Bamako and Mali as a whole by representative surveys the experiment (Afrobarometer 2007). However, who women, severely underrepresents comprise just 27% of the experimental population.28 After ap a subject, we administered proaching a potential we in which back screening questionnaire sought ground information, including first and last name and 27 As an inferential matter, however, the slight misclassification may lead us to underestimate the true effects of some treatments, as we discuss in the next section and in the Appendix. 28 In Bamako, women tend to be doing work inside houses or com pounds, whereas men, when at home, tend to be outside sipping tea. identity.29 The information gathered during screening allowed us to determine subject eligibility and to assign subjects randomly to the treatment and control conditions.30 To create the political speech to be viewed by the experimental subjects, we drew on fieldwork conducted by one of us (Harrison) inBamako duringMali's parlia mentary elections in 2007, as well as secondary sources. The speech focused on standard themes inMalian polit ical campaigns, such as the need to improve infrastruc ture, invest in schools, and relieve electricity blackouts. 56% of experimental subjects said the Approximately them of a speech they had heard on a "reminded speech previous occasion." The speech was delivered inBam bara/Bamanakan, which is the lingua franca of Bamako (and ofMali).31 The fieldwork for our experiment took place from June to October 2008. Subjects viewed the videotaped political speech on a portable DVD player or laptop computer using head When phones. subjects were found in groups, only one was recruited per group; only the subject could subject hear the speech through the headphones, and each sub ject answered follow-up questions on his or her own. These features of the research design limited the po tential for subjects' responses to treatment to depend on the treatment assignment of other subjects, which would violate the standard assumption in experimental ethnic 29 The screening questionnaire asked for name, sex, year of birth, last year of schooling completed, place of birth, years living in Bamako, where else subject has lived (if anywhere), whether the subject is registered to vote, language of greatest daily use, the first language the subject learned, and the subject's ethnic identity. 30 Around 20% of potential subjects were not eligible to participate surnames did not appear in the rows because their (more unusual) of our random assignment matrix. For such subjects, who are not included in this article's analysis, we showed a single version of the an abbreviated speech and then administered question postspeech naire. 31 The use of Bambara does not necessarily imply a particular ethnic identity for the politician. Among experimental subjects who self identified with an ethnicity other than Bambara/Bamanan, 61% most in daily life, 14% speak Bambara frequently speak both Bambara and French, and 13% speak primarily French?leaving who use their first language most just 12% of non-Bambaras attribute a frequently. Also, subjects did not disproportionately and Bamanan/Bambara identity to either of our actors/politicians one attributed a similar distribution of ethnicities to both?although actor was in fact ethnically Bambara, the other was ethni whereas cally Peulh. 27 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting_February 2010 analysis of "no interference between units" (Cox 1958) or what Rubin (1978) called the "stable unit treatment value assumption" (SUTVA). Follow-up questions then asked subjects to evalu ate the content of the speech and the politician who delivered it.For instance, subjects answered questions about the speech's quality, whether the speech made them want to vote for the candidate, and candidate attributes such as competence, likeability, and intelli gence. The experimental manipulation was reinforced re through repetition of the politician's surname. Our the politician's surname search assistants mentioned before playing the videotape (after subjects were ran domly assigned to one of the treatment conditions) and repeated it each time they asked about the can didate or the speech in the posttreatment question naire. Our Malian research assistants asked the follow or a mixture of in French, Bambara, up questions the two.32 A final aspect of the experimental design to note is thatwe sought to achieve a within-subjects component to the experimental design in order to reduce the vari ance of estimated treatment effects.To do this,we hired twoMalian actors, who each separately recorded the political speech; some subjects saw the speech twice, with a different actor each time. However, we took care to ensure that the identity of the actor did not interact with other experimental stimuli.33 The results we reported here are qualitatively very similar when of the second speech. showings drop all data from The experimental protocol was published prior to data analysis (Dunning 2009), as recommended by many methodologists. It bears emphasis that we might expect treatment effects to be weak in this experiment, for several rea sons. First, viewing a videotaped political speech may not closely approximate the experience of attending our attempt to create a a real political rally. Despite to is similar that typical campaign speeches, the speech a laptop or DVD makes the via of the delivery speech stimulus somewhat artificial. Second, subjects were not asked to evaluate politicians whom they already knew, and the effects of cousinage or coethnicity could be different (perhaps stronger) with different candidate histories. Finally, merely changing the last name of the politician across different treatment conditions may not provide a strong priming of ethnic identification or cousinage ties. By simply changing the last name of the politician giving a speech, we may fail to capture the subtle and perhaps more powerful ways inwhich political actors call on the institution of cousinage to serve their strategic purposes. Nonetheless, our substantive wager was that ethnic alliances are sufficiently im ties and cousinage-based portant thatmerely changing the last name of the politi cian would allow us to capture some of the interacting the effects of these cross-cutting cleavages. However, true effects of cousinage and ethnic ties may be sub stantially stronger than those we estimate here. RESULTS: EXPERIMENTAL INTENTION-TO-TREAT ANALYSIS viewing the videotaped political speech, sub were asked, "On a scale of 1 to 7, how much jects does this speech make you want to vote for (name of con politician)?"34 For subjects assigned to the control dition inwhich the politician's last name was not given, this candidate replaced name ofpolitician. Higher num bers indicate more favorable evaluations. The aver age candidate evaluation was 4.53 across all treatment conditions, with a standard deviation of 1.73. Table 3 reports descriptive statistics for all response variables posttreatment ques analyzed in this article. Because on different scales (some on a tions were measured scale of 1-5 and others on a scale of 1-7), Table 3 also presents means and standard deviations for the response variables, rescaled to run from 0 to 1. How did coethnicity and cousinage alliances shape subjects' evaluations of candidates? To answer this question, we compare average responses among sub jects randomly assigned to the various treatment and control conditions. Such intention-to-treat analysis es timates the causal effect of treatment assignment (Freedman 2006). The intention-to-treat principle im plies thatwe ignore (for themoment) whether subjects actually believed the politician to be their coethnic or their cousin; we return to this important issue later in the article. Figure 1 graphically depicts average candidate evalu ations by treatment assignment category for four treat ments, and Table 4 reports the full results. As Figure 1 and Table 4 show, both coethnicity and cousinage al liances significantly affect candidate evaluations. On average, assignment to view a speech by a coethnic, rather than a politician from a different ethnic group, raised candidate evaluations by more than one half a point, whereas assignment to view a cousin rather than a noncousin increased evaluations by just under one half of one point. Taken together, the effects imply that assignment to view a speech by a coethnic cousin, rather than a noncousin from a different ethnic group, raised the average evaluation by 1.09 points (with a / statistic of 5.54), or nearly two thirds of one standard After deviation.35 the evidence important for our purposes, can counteract the relations that suggests cousinage Most 34 32We supervised our two research assistants intensively, especially In total, at least one of the during our initial smaller experiments. two authors was present for 11% of the subject interviews. 33 The identity of the actor in the first video was assigned at random to subjects who saw two versions. Perhaps surprisingly, few subjects commented on the identical content of the speeches, and there was variance in responses. substantial within-subject In French, the question reads "Sur une ?chelle de 1 ? 7, est-ce que le discours de (nom du politicien/ce candidat) vous donne envie de = non, pas du tout, 7 = oui, tout ? fait)." (1 pr?f?rer ce candidat? itmay be The verb "pr?f?rer" may be slightly ambiguous, because interpreted as "to prefer" or "vote for" in this context. 35 suggests additive rather than in Surprisingly to us, the evidence is the estimated effect of cousinage teractive effects. For example, is a coethnic. about the same, regardless of whether the politician 28 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Vol. 104,No. 1 American Political Science Review TABLE 3. Descriptive Statistics on Response Variables (Across All TreatmentConditions) Variable Range Global evaluation of candidate Global evaluation of speech The candidate 1-7 1-7 Mean Mean (SD) Range 0-1 (SD) 4.53 (1.73) 6.29 (1.22) 0.58 (0.29) 0.88 (0.20) 4.49 (0.61) 2.90 (0.95) 2.72 (0.96) 4.26(1.69) 2.57 (1.08) 3.49 (1.78) 2.99 (1.80) 6.13(1.39) 4.00 (1.35) 6.01 (1.44) 0.87 0.48 0.43 0.54 0.39 0.42 0.33 0.85 0.50 0.84 ... Is likeable Is intelligent Is competent Is impressive Is trustworthy Would do a good job inoffice Would defend others and fightforhis ideals Has good motivations forrunning Would successfully face challenges of office Has good ideas 1-5 1-5 1-5 1-7 1-5 1-7 1-7 1-7 1-7 1-7 (0.15) (0.24) (0.24) (0.28) (0.27) (0.30) (0.30) (0.23) (0.23) (0.24) The table reports the theoretical (and empirical) range, mean, and standard deviation for each variable analyzed foreach variable, recoded on a 0-1 scale. and standard deviations in the article. The final column reports means FIGURE 1. Average Candidate Coethnic Cousins Evaluations, by Treatment Coethnics, Not Cousins, Not Coethnics Cousins answers category figure reports average by treatment assignment speech make you want to vote for (name of politician/this candidate)?" The negative effects of ethnic differences on candidate eval uations. In fact, the average evaluation of cousins from a different ethnic group (4.44) is statistically indistin guishable from the average evaluation of noncousins from the same ethnic group (4.57). On average, subjects appear roughly indifferent between noncousins from their own ethnic group and cousins from a different ethnic group. We subjected these results to a variety of robustness rank-sum tests.Nonparametric, two-sample Wilcoxon tests,which are based on the median rather than the mean, tell the same story as the parametric analysis: Assignment to the question, Not Not "On a scale Coethnics, Cousins of 1 to 7, how much does this coethnics are significantly preferred to non-coethnics, and cousins are significantly preferred to noncousins, whereas preferences for joking cousins from a differ ent ethnic group and noncousins from the same ethnic group are statistically indistinguishable. We also found very similar treatment effects for similar questions, such as "On a scale of 1 to 7, how would you rate our main the global quality of this speech?" Because across multiple experiments, analysis effectively pools one for each subject surname, we also analyzed treat ment effects by individual surnames; although sample sizes are small, even for themost common last names, 29 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages TABLE 4. February 2010 and Ethnic Voting Average Candidate Evaluations, by Treatment Subject and politician are jokingcousins A Assignment Subject and politician are not jokingcousins B Difference of means A-B Subject and politician are from same ethnic group 5.05 4.57 0.49*** (0.15) (0.16) (0.22) Subject and politicianare from differentethnic groups 4.44 3.96 0.48** (0.17) (0.13) (0.21) Difference of means C-D 0.61*** 0.61*** (0.20) Control conditions (0.22) Politician's last name not 4.33 (0.12) given Subject and politician have same 4.84 last name answers to the question, The cells report average want to vote for (name of politician/this candidate)?" ***p<.001. (0.15) "On a scale Estimated the results track the aggregate findings. Finally, we con ducted several tests using permutation distributions of the test statistics, under the sharp null hypothesis of no unit-level effects, and found substantively identical results.36 In addition, although our intention-to-treat analysis suggests significant effects, it likely underestimates the effect of treatment receipt. As we show in the Ap pendix, treatment effects are nearly 50% larger once we adjust for some mismatches between treatment as signment and subjects' perceptions of the treatment? that is,when we estimate the effects of treatment on those who perceive the treatment as we intended. Note that here and in the Appendix, we do not present analysis by "treatment received"; that is,we do not compare all subjects who perceive the politician to be a cousin to all those who perceive the politician to be a noncousin. Suppose that some subjects generally feel more positively about other people and are also more likely to identify other people as their joking cousins. By comparing subjects who identify the politician as a cousin with those who do not, we might misleadingly infer that cousinage boosts evaluations of politicians when instead there is simply an omitted confounder? that is, how positive a subject is about people in gen 36 The sharp null hypothesis assumes no effects at the unit level, so unit potential outcomes are the same for every treatment assignment. Thus, observed outcomes under the actual treatment assignment vec tor reveal potential outcomes for counterfactual assignments. Under this sharp null hypothesis, we can calculate the exact probabilities (known as Fisher's exact /^-values) of observing differences between treatment conditions as big as the ones we actually observe, given the vector of assignment probabilities. However, the sharp null may be less relevant if treatment "hurts" the evaluations of some subjects and "helps" the evaluations of others. For discussion of Fisher's pro cedure, see Fisher (1956), Rosenbaum (2002, Chapter 2), or Bowers and Panagopolous (2009). of 1 to 7, how much does this speech make standard errors are reported in parentheses. you eral. Use of our "objective" matrix, rather than the de facto perceptions of subjects, solves this problem by randomizing people to treatment conditions. However, we can then use the random assignment to address the important issue of perception by estimating the "effect of treatment on compilers" (see theAppendix). data gathered during the experiment Qualitative also underscore the political salience of both ethnic and cousinage ties. In response to open-ended questions, subjects frequently made disparaging remarks about candidates from different ethnic groups. For example, an ethnic Bamanan subject who saw a speech by a politician named Guindo (a patronym from the Do gon ethnic group) said someone named Guindo "could never do a good job" as a politician. Another Bamanan said that Dogons "don't know how to lead." An eth nic Songhai suggested that Bobo ethnics "don't know anything about politics," whereas an ethnic Malink? subject said the same of Dogons. An ethnic Sonink? subject, in turn, offered the opinion that "the Malink?s are not intelligent." Subjects tended to offer more positive comments about coethnics. For instance, a Bamanan subject named Kon? saw a speech by a coethnic named Di arra and said "the Kon? and the Diarra are the same thing." One subject who said he paid attention to the candidate's family name in reflecting on the candi date's merits said he did so because "it is important to know the identity of the candidate." Subjects also held a special regard for politicians who shared their own surnames. A subject with the last name Anne offered the opinion that "the Anne family is composed of intellectuals." One subject named Sacko said that "a Sacko is a hard worker," and another commented that the "Sackos are very cultured." A griot (oral historian) named Kouyat? commented that "if a griot [Kouyat?] is a candidate, it is because he is capable ofmany things," whereas a Malink? subject named Kon? said that she 30 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Vol. 104,No. 1 American Political Science Review FIGURE 2. Effectsof a Cousinage Alliance on Evaluations of Candidate Attributes (Differences 0.13 of Means, Cousins Minus Noncousins) n 0.11 i 0.09 0.07 0.05 1 0.03 0.01 -0.01 Likeable Has Would Face Hasfcood Would WouldDo a Trustworthy ImpressiveComqetent Intelligent food ofMotivations Defend Good Job Ideas Challenges Office . Others -0.03 1 -0.05 are attributes. All variables on subjects' of the candidate's evaluations alliances effect of cousinage The figure reports the estimated vertical lines show 95% rescaled to run from 0-1, so effect sizes are on that scale. The darkened circles give point estimates, whereas to the "coethnic, noncousin" of subjects assigned intervals. The analysis pools across coethnicity; that is,mean confidence responses to the "coethnic cousin" or of subjects from the mean or "non-coethnic, noncousin" conditions are subtracted responses assigned "non-coethnic cousin" conditions. paid attention to the politician's name of Kon? because the "Kon?s are nobles." (The Kon?s were members of the caste of nobles during the Mali Empire.) A sub ject named Keita, when asked whether she would be more susceptible to vote for a candidate sharing her reference to family name, said "yes, like uncle IBK"?a an opposition candidate during the 2007 presidential elections, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Finally and most important, subjects offered several rationales for their tendency to support cousins. The ability of cousins to reprimand and sanction one an other appeared to play a particularly important role. As one subject put it, ifa joking cousin "is not serious, we will correct him." Another said she would vote for her cousin because "if he does not respect his promises, I will bring him to heel, because he is a cousin." These comments suggest some hypotheses about why subjects prefer candidates who are their cousins. Unfortunately, our data do not allow us to distinguish rigorously between independent families of mecha nisms thatmay explain why subjects vote for coethnics et al. (2007), for example, and cousins, as Habyarimana have sought to do in explaining why ethnic diversity inhibits public goods provision. some our analysis does provide Nonetheless, mean 2 clues. differences, presents Figure important across the cousin and noncousin conditions, in subjects' evaluations of candidate attributes such as likeability, competence, intelligence, and trustworthiness. To focus attention on the effects of cousinage, in Fig ure 2 we pool across the ethnic relationship between subjects and politicians; that is,we compare subjects or "non-coethnic assigned to the "coethnic cousin" to the conditions with subjects assigned cousin" "coethnic, noncousin" or "non-coethnic, noncousin" conditions. Such pooling is appropriate for two reasons. First, coethnicity is assigned at random with equal as probability, so there are about as many coethnics noncoethnics in each of the cousin and noncousin con ditions (Table 1 ). Second, our analysis suggests additive rather than interactive effects (Table 4). Thus, pooling readily allows us to estimate the effects of cousinage, 31 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting February 2010 net of the effects of ethnicity.37Note that for purposes of comparability across differing scales, in Figure 2 the raw variables measuring subjects' evaluations of candidate attributes are all rescaled to run from 0 to 1. Our quantitative analysis echoes the qualitative comments discussed previously. The single largest dif ference of means is for a survey question asking sub jects whether the candidate is trustworthy.38On the 0-1 scale, cousins are viewed as over 0.07 points more trustworthy than noncousins, for a statistically signifi cant effect size of more than one fourth of a standard deviation. Cousins are also rated more favorably than noncousins on other variables that tap expectations about postelectoral behavior, such as whether the can didate would do a good job ifelected, whether he or she would fight for others and defend his or her ideals, or whether he or she could successfully face the challenges of office (although for the latter two variables, the dif ferences ofmeans are significant only at the 0.1 level). In contrast, cousins are seen as no more competent, intelligent, or impressive than noncousins. They are, however, viewed as more likeable than noncousins.39 One interpretation of these data is indeed that voters anticipate being able to sanction cousins who renege on campaign promises, or anticipate being able to procure benefits from their cousins, thus making such candi dates more "trustworthy."40 Perhaps social networks also allow voters tomonitor and sanction both cousins and coethnics.41 In our postreatment questionnaire, we asked subjects how many of their close friends and acquaintances (i.e., people they see regularly but who are not as close as friends) bear the same last name as the politician in the video; possible answers ranged from 0 to 10 or more.42 Figure 3 displays the average number of close friends and acquaintances bearing the last name of the politician in the video by treatment assignment. Notice that subjects assigned to the co ethnic cousin condition have on average 4.73 friends 37 the analysis separately for coethnics However, we also conducted and non-coethnics, with similar results. 38 "Trustworthy" or "worthy of confidence" are both possible trans lations of "digne de confiance" in French. 39 We have also analyzed the effects of coethnicity, pooling across about there, variables cousinage relationships; tapping expectations behavior are also most important. postelectoral 40 are not considered In general, political candidates very worthy of confidence; thus, any factor that increases trustworthiness could be especially valuable to politicians. Across all treatment conditions, the mean trustworthiness of candidates is just 0.39 on a scale of 0 to 1. Subjects were similarly pessimistic about whether the candidate would do a good job in office, defend others and fight for his or of office (Table 3). her ideals, or successfully face the challenges to one experimental According subject, the videotaped politician "would construct his village with the country's money, forgetting all of his ideals;" according to another, the politician "will only defend his own village." This echoes evidence from a recent survey, inwhich 90% of respondents said that politicians "often" or "always" make promises just to get elected, whereas 84% said politicians "never" or 2007, "rarely" keep their promises after elections (Afrobarometer 50). 41 One noted that "the Djelys subject named Kouyat? (griots, are trustworthy." Kouyat?s) 42 It should be borne inmind that this is an observational, not exper the number of friendships imental, quantity. We cannot manipulate that subjects have with people bearing various last names. and 7.1 acquaintances with the politician's last name, whereas subjects assigned to the noncoethnic, non cousin condition have on average just 1.75 friends and 3.52 acquaintances with the politician's surname.43 It is possible that voters prefer their cousins and coethnics because they are more tightly linked with them in social networks, which may also make it easier for them to sanction politicians who perform poorly.44 However, these are not the only interpretations con sistent with our evidence. It could well be that the greater trustworthiness of cousins is related to their greater likeability, although the fact that cousins are not seen as any more intelligent, competent, or impres sive than noncousins may weaken the interpretation that affective factors play an important role. Our data cannot readily tell us whether likeability and trustwor thiness are independent dimensions that shape candi date evaluations,45 nor can they tell us the precise role played by social networks. Although it is possible that networks increase cousins' trustworthiness by allowing voters tomonitor and sanction their cousins more ef fectively (Stokes 2005), just as theymay monitor coeth nics in other contexts (Fearon and Laitin 1996), further evidence isneeded on thispoint. In the final analysis, we cannot adjudicate between all such alternative mecha nisms. Future research should seek to explain further why voters prefer coethnics and their cousins. CAN COUSINAGEALLIANCESEXPLAINTHE ABSENCE OF ETHNICVOTING INMALI? To what extent can the causal effects revealed by our experiment help explain the real world puzzle we have the weak relationship between highlighted?namely, ethnicity and individual vote choice inMali? Com paring cousinage to other explanatory factors is chal lenging. For example, existing data on individual vote choice do not include measures of joking kinship al liances between voters and politicians, so it is difficult to assess the "variance explained" by cousinage. How ever, our own data allow us tomake some progress in this regard. In this section, we discuss external validity and several related topics before turning to alternative explanations. First, note that random assignment to the treatment conditions supports the internal validity of our conclu sions and implies that we can validly estimate causal effects for our experimental study group. Yet, is the study group representative of the population ofMali, 43 On average, subjects in the "own last name" condition had 6.89 friends and 8.11 acquaintances with that name. 44 Although we do not have the data to pursue the hypothesis here, voters may anticipate receiving greater access to government benefits from cousins, just as they do from coethnics in other settings (Bates in a nationally 1983). Clientelism plays an important role inMali; said that politicians of survey, 83% of respondents representative fer gifts to voters during electoral campaigns "always" or "often" 2007, 50). (Afrobarometer 45 In earlier work, we generated two linear and additive scales com prised of variables tapping "affection" and "credibility," respectively. a useful heuristic, we cannot really defend the grouping of Although into two independent indices. the component variables 32 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American Political Science Review Vol. 104,No. 1 FIGURE 3. Mean Number of Subjects' Friend and Acquaintances Sharing the Politician's Last Name (byTreatmentAssignment) Coethnic Cousins i Cousins, Not Coethnics idi Coethnics, Not Cousins Not Coethnics, Not Cousins 0 1 > Acquaintances figure presents average answers by treatment assignment last name?" and "How many of your acquaintances of politician's answers have the family name politician's last name?" Possible The or even of Bamako? 3 4 5 67 8 Friends to the questions, "How many of your close friends have the family name (people whom you see regularly but who are not as close as friends) run from 0 to 10 or more (which is coded as 10). noted previously, our field investigators canyased every neighborhood of Bamako in a more-or-less random way. However, subjects who chose to participate in the experiment (or whom our to participate) field investigators chose to persuade may be unlike those who refused inways thatmatter for subjects' responses to treatment. Thus, even if strict probability sampling had been used to recruit subjects, nonparticipation might have posed obstacles to validly extrapolating estimated treatment effects to broader populations. In addition, the capital city is clearly un like the rest ofMali inmany ways, which may also limit the external validity of our findings. Although we cannot fully correct for nonparticipa tion,we can partially assess the resulting degree of bias when we extrapolate estimated treatment effects to broader populations. As noted previously, the distribu tion of key covariates in the experimental study group is quite similar to those reported by representative sur veys. For example, ifwe pick any two experimental subjects from our data set, the probability that they are coethnics is about .17.This number is strikingly consis tentwith the ethnolinguistic fractionalization score of .84 reported forMali byAlesina et al. (2003,185), which gives the probability that two individuals selected at random are from different ethnic groups. This may also imply, inter alia, that our study group includes a fairly representative sample of last names because there is no a priori reason to think that our sampling process As 2a would over- or underrepresent particular last names, within each ethnic group.46 However, we were quite concerned about the un derrepresentation of women in our sample. After all, if treatment effects differ systematically formen and women, we might risk bias in extrapolating effects from our study group.47 To evaluate this possibility, we estimated the treatment effects reported inTable 4 (the results are re separately for men and women an in online Note that for both ported Appendix).48 men and women in our study group, our estimators are unbiased and internally valid because both men and women were randomized to treatment conditions. In Table 5, we present the weighted average of these unbiased estimates, where theweights are proportional to the inverse of the probability of selection formen and women.49 In principle, this procedure allows us 46 As mentioned earlier, we did not randomize ineligible subjects, who have very unusual surnames, to the treatment conditions and thus did not include them in the experimental analysis; however, we recorded their surnames, and we use that data in our analysis of the relations that follows. frequency of cousinage 47 It is conceivable relations were originally that because cousinage established between surnames linked to caste, and because caste still to some degree, that joking kinships would be indicates profession more salient among men. However, we found in the field that many women engage in cousinage-based joking (see also Jones 2007). 48 See http://research.thaddunning.com. 49 The probability of selection is 73/100 for men and 27/100 for women. 33 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages TABLE 5. and Ethnic Voting Average Candidate February 2010 Evaluations, by Treatment (WeightedAverages of Male and Female Subjects) Subject and politician are jokingcousins A Assignment Subject and politician are not jokingcousins B Difference of means A-B Subject and politician are from same ethnic group C 4.89 4.51 0.38 (0.15) (0.16) (0.22) Subject and politician are from differentethnic groups D Difference of means 4.28 3.79 0.49*** (0.17) (0.13) (0.21) 0.61*** 0.72*** C-D (0.22) (0.20) Control conditions Politician's last name not given 4.03 (0.12) Subject and politician have same 4.65 last name (0.15) answers The cells report average to the question, "On a scale of 1 to 7, how much does this speech make you want to vote for (name of politician/this candidate)?" The table reports weighted of treatment effects averages estimated separately formen and forwomen, where the weights are proportional to the inverse of the probability of selection. Estimated standard errors are reported inparentheses and are as inTable 4. ***p< .001. to correct for the overrepresentation of men and the of women. Note, however, that underrepresentation in using the weights to extrapolate to the population of Bamako, we are in effect assuming that we have a simple random sample of men and a simple random sample of women, which may be a strong assumption. Thus, we preferred to begin with the estimates of causal effects reported inTable 4, which are internally valid for our experimental study group. Our evidence suggests that cousinage and coethnic ity shape the voting preferences ofmen and women in similar ways. Although female subjects evaluated our male candidates less positively than did male subjects, on average (across all cells ofTable 5, candidate evalua tions are 0.17 points lower than inTable 4), there is little difference in the estimated effects of cousinage or co ethnicity.Women in our study group may be marginally more influenced by coethnicity than by cousinage (e.g., among subjects exposed to coethnic politicians, the weighted average effect of cousinage isno longer signif icant; however, it is significant for those exposed to non the differences are slight. Thus, coethnics). However, even when we adjust for the underrepresentation of women, as inTable 5, the substantive interpretation of the results is the same: coethnicity and cousinage both boost evaluations of our candidates, but the two effects are similar in size and nearly cancel each other out. other biases that might be introduced Evaluating in extrapolating our treatment effects is a subtler is sue. For example, would we find different treatment effects in an experimental study group drawn from the whole country? The only way to answer this question is through replication of the experiment on a nation ally representative sample. However, we do have some capacity to evaluate whether the effects of cousinage might be particularly strong (or weak) among urban dwellers. First, it is useful to note that urban residents are quite mobile: nearly 87% of our experimental study group has lived somewhere besides Bamako. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that this set of subjects predom inates in the experimental study group, we find that treatment effects for this subgroup are very similar to those reported inTable 4. Second and more interesting, we find very similar estimated treatment effects when we restrict the sample to subjects who have lived in Bamako for less than five years in total (15% of the study group) or less than ten years in total (34% of the study group).50 Thus, we can have at least some confidence that cousinage may have similar effects out side the capital city.51 Several pieces of additional evidence may be re quired to support our claim that cousinage helps ex plain the limited role of ethnic voting inMali. First, cousinage links between voters and politicians must be widespread and comparable in frequency to ethnic ties. After all, if cousinage alliances only affect a small pro portion of the population, they cannot very plausibly counter the effects of ethnicity on voter preferences in the electorate as a whole. To evaluate this issue, note that the probability that any subject drawn at random from our data set has a given surname is the number of subjects with this surname, divided by the total number of subjects. The probability that a second subject drawn at random is the cousin of the first subject is the num ber of the first subject's cousins in our data set, again divided by the number of subjects. The probability of 50 The results are posted to our online Appendix at http://research. thaddunning. com. 51 Some subjects who have lived outside Bamako have lived in other countries inWest Africa, as well as in other parts of Mali. Interest is also practiced. ingly, these tend to be countries inwhich cousinage 34 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1 drawing a subject with the first surname and then draw ing a subject who ishis or her cousin is then the product of these two probabilities. (This assumes drawing with replacement, a minor technical issue.) Then, the prob ability that any two names drawn from our data set are cousins is the sum of the individual probabilities, calculated in thisway for each surname. Assuming ar guendo a representative sample of last names in our experimental study group, the latter sum estimates the probability that any two individuals drawn at random from the population of Bamako are cousins. Our analysis suggests that cousinage alliances are as coethnic ties. The estimated at least as widespread two individuals drawn at random that any probability are cousins is at least .14.52By comparison, recall that the estimated probability that two randomly drawn in dividuals are coethnics is about .17. It also bears em phasis that leading exemplars of cross-cutting cousi nage alliances are very common in our data set. For example, approximately 10% of our subjects are named either Keita or Coulibaly; on average, at least one half of 1% of randomly drawn subject pairs will include one Keita and one Coulibaly, whose cousinage alliance cross-cuts theMalink? and Bambara ethnic groups.53 Second, our evidence suggests that cousinage is not only a widespread social institution, but also politically relevant. In our experiment, the estimated effects of cousinage alliances are strongest for politically active subjects?defined as subjects who say that they are reg istered to vote and who have voted in themost recent presidential and parliamentary elections. Although the group of politically active subjects is smaller than the group of nonactive subjects, estimated treatment ef fects tend to be substantively large and statistically sig nificant for this smaller, politically active group. For the larger, nonactive group, estimated treatment effects are smaller and sometimes insignificant.54 In addition, the political salience of cousinage appears independent of effect, whereby the importance any "modernization" of cousinage recedes as people become more educated. If anything,, causal effects are stronger formore edu cated subjects (those who have a baccalaur?at) than for less educated subjects. The heightened relevance of cousinage alliances among politically active and edu cated citizens may suggest the political utility of these alliances in fully "modern" forms of electoral compe tition. If cousinage alliances are both politically salient and strategically useful for candidates (as our brief ex amples suggested earlier in this article), then party leaders may also exploit the preference of voters for 52 This is likely an underestimate because we included only well known or "strong" cousinage relations in our random assignment matrix (the list is not intended to be exhaustive). Our procedure that cousinage links are may therefore bias against the hypothesis At the least, however, it puts a floor on this probability. widespread. 53 For politicians bearing one of the surnames of Mali's four pres the probability idents since independence, that any voter drawn at or surpasses the probability that random is a cousin also approaches any voter is a coethnic. 54 Commands for the full results are included in a Stata .do file, which is posted at http://research.thaddunning.com. their cousins in placing candidates on party lists.We devised a way to investigate this possibility more sys tematically. First, we used three rounds ofAfrobarom eter survey data to estimate the distribution of eth nic groups within each of the electoral constituencies fromwhich candidates on single or multimember party lists are elected to theNational Assembly.55 The Afro barometer surveys taken in 2001, 2002, and 2005 were all nationally representative probability samples, and 55 each survey has respondents from most of Mali's constituencies.56 Combining data across the three sur veys gives us probability samples of, on average, 87 respondents per constituency, with a median of 60. Because most constituencies have one or two major ethnic groups, this sample size allows us to estimate the distribution of ethnic groups in each constituency with reasonable precision. Next, we obtained the names and ethnicities of 221 candidates placed on party lists by Mali's three largest parties, ADEMA-PASJ, RPM, and the 2007 elections. URD, during legislative Together, these parties won 96 of 147 seats in the National As sembly.We then coded the ethnic match between each candidate and his or her electoral constituency. Be cause the largest ethnic group in each constituency comprises, on average, nearly 71% of the population, itmakes sense to code whether each politician comes from the largest ethnic group in his or her constituency. our results are similar ifwe instead code However, whether each candidate came from one of the two largest, three largest, or four largest ethnic groups.57 To evaluate the extent of cousinage alliances be tween ethnic minority candidates and the ethnic in each candidate's majority group(s) constituency, we then calculated two probabilities: the probability that a voter drawn at random from the largest ethnic group (or groups) in a given constituency would be a cousin of each candidate, and the weighted average proba bility that a voter drawn at random from any other ethnic group would be a cousin of the candidate (where the weights are the relative sizes of the other ethnic groups). Under the null hypothesis that parties are not paying attention to cousinage relations between ethnic minority candidates and ethnic majority groups, these probabilities should be about the same. In contrast, if parties pay attention to cousinage relations in placing candidates on party lists,we may find that ethnic mi nority candidates are disproportionately likely to have cousinage relations with voters from the ethnic major itygroup.58 55 Mali has a two-round, winner-take-all list system inwhich the party themajority of votes (in the first or second round) takes commanding all seats from the constituency. 56 The electoral constituencies 49 administrative units comprise called cercles, plus the 6 communes of Bamako. 57 Across Mali's 55 constituencies, the identity of the largest ethnic group is alternately Bambar? (23), Bobo (2), Dogon (2), Fula/Peulh (4),Malink? (3),Mianka (1), Senoufo (1), Sonink? (6), Sonrhai (8), or Tuareg (5). 58 To estimate these probabilities, we followed a procedure analo gous to that described for estimating the probability of drawing two cousins at random (although now conditioning on the ethnic group). 35 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting February 2010 Our results suggest, first, that in choosing candidates, parties inMali underrepresent major ethnic groups in each electoral constituency. Although the largest ethnic group comprises 71% of each constituency on average, the candidates in our data set come from this ethnic group just 39% of the time.59 In other words, the prob ability that any voter and any citizen-candidate picked at random from thepool of citizens will both come from the largest ethnic group is (.71)(.71) = .50, on average. Yet, the probability that a voter drawn at random and a candidate picked at random from an actual party list will both come from the largest ethnic group is just = .28.The gap to be explained is thus on the (.71)(.39) ? 28 = 22 order of 50 percentage points. This finding, as it is is, striking obviously consistent with the puzzle thatmotivates this article. However, we also find that the strategic use of cousi nage relations by parties may at least partially account for the lack of ethnic match between candidates and their constituencies. Recall that the estimated prob ability that a voter and a citizen-candidate drawn at random are cousins is .14; thus, cousinage may go some distance toward explaining the gap between .50 and .28. Most relevant here, the estimated probability that an ethnic-minority candidate is a cousin of a randomly drawn voter from themajority group is .16,whereas the estimated probability that this candidate is a cousin of a randomly drawn voter from any other ethnic group is .09.60 In other words, our evidence suggests that ethnic minority candidates are at least two thirdsmore likely to be cousins of voters in the ethnic majority group than they are to be cousins of ethnic minority voters. A final piece of evidence also supports our argument. As we show, coethnicity and cousinage both positively affect candidate evaluations. Given the weak associa tion between ethnicity and vote choice in observational data, coethnic and cousinage tiesmust arguably be neg atively associated, in the sense that one's cousins tend disproportionately to be non-coethnics; if so, omitting the effects of cousinage from observational analyses would suppress the true effect of ethnicity. We use the following procedure to verify this claim. For each experimental subject, we can use the information in our random assignment matrix to classify the subject's ethnic and cousinage ties to an ethnically Malink? named Keita, the patronym of Mali's first politician 1 after Our analysis suggests a president independence. strong negative relationship between ethnic and cousi nage ties, at least for this patronym. Among subjects from theMalink? ethnic group, just 34% of subjects 59 Similarly, the two largest ethnic groups in each constituency com the three prise on average 87% of citizens but just 62% of candidates; largest groups include 91% of citizens but just 74% of candidates; and the four largest groups comprise 92% of citizens but only 75% of candidates. 60 these are likely to be underestimates of the true proba Again, is likely underestimated bilities, but each probability by the same amount. What is relevant is thus the difference in the estimated probabilities. 61 in this regard because is a good surname to examine it Keita appears in one of the columns of nearly all of the rows of our random assignment matrix. are also cousins with the Keita. In contrast, among from non-Malink? ethnic around 57% groups, subjects are cousins of theKeita. In other words, for a politician named Keita, the off-diagonal cells in the top two rows of Table 1 are more heavily populated, empirically, than are the diagonal cells.62Although our data do not allow us to investigate the relevant covariance for all poten tial politician names, our analysis therefore suggests the strong plausibility that cousinage and coethnic ties are negatively related. What about other explanations? Our claim is by no means that cousinage constitutes the only reason there is relatively little ethnic voting inMali. Our experiment does not readily allow us to compare the strength of cousinage with all other potential explanatory factors, although our experiment does usefully suggest that the cross-cutting effect of cousinage almost exactly cancels the effect of coethnicity on candidate preferences. Yet, it is also useful to note that some plausible alternative explanations appear incomplete on close examination. For instance, it has been suggested that French colonists encouraged forms of occupational cross-cut that ethnic groups, or instituted specialization other policies that limited the political salience of eth nicity. Our ability fully to probe alternative "French colonialism" arguments is somewhat limited, because the countries where cousinage is practiced are indeed former French colonies. However, ethnicity does have a political role inmany former French colonies in sub sanaran Africa in which cousinage is not practiced, or Chad. Perhaps themost such as Gongo-Brazzaville interesting comparison is to Benin, located just south of Burkina Faso and not far fromMali; Benin is among the countries inFrench West Africa without cousinage and with ethnic politics (Basedau and Stroh 2009; Koter 2009). We have not found evidence that the French en couraged greater cross-cutting occupational specializa tion inMali than inBenin or their other West African colonies.63 Other explanations for the limited salience of ethnic ity inMali and elsewhere where cousinage is practiced may well be complementary, rather than alternative. Ko ter (2009), for example, has examined how distinct modes ofmobilizing traditional authority may account for the contrasting role of ethnic politics inBenin and S?n?gal. Yet, the existence of cross-cutting cousinage ties inMali and S?n?gal (but not Benin) may have made patterns of mobilization along nonethnic lines more feasible as well. List voting and proportional represen tation could also contribute to our finding that parties 62 we show that subjects are also more cognizant In the Appendix, of the surnames of non-coethnic than coethnic cousins, which may rather than within-group further suggest the salience of across-group cousinage alliances. 63 and Adloff discuss French Thompson (1957, 249-68, 491-510) colonial economic has a small formal economy, mak policy. Mali encouraged by the specializations ing it less likely that occupational inmany French would have much political salience today. Moreover, some occupations are associated countries in French West Africa, rather than cross with particular ethnic groups, creating overlapping are traditionally inMali, for instance, the Bozo cutting cleavages: the Peulh fisherman, while all across West Africa, typically herd cattle (Dominika Koter, personal correspondence, 36 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions July 2009). American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1 tend to include candidates from nonmajority groups on lists.For instance, parties may put one or two candi dates from themajority ethnic group on their lists and also include minority candidates. However, this cannot be a sufficient condition for nonethnic voting, because several former French colonies (including Benin) have both list voting and ethnicized politics. The presence of listvoting also does not explain why, inMali, candidates fromminority groups are disproportionately likely to be cousins of voters from majority ethnic groups, as we found previously. It is indeed striking that inWest Africa, ethnicity has a more limited political role in those countries located largely in theWestern Sahel zone in which cousinage is practiced, such as Mali, than in countries S?n?gal, The Gambia, and Guinea, where it does not exist, such as Benin or Nigeria. Thus, although the observational evidence presented in this section cannot definitively tell us how much variance cousinage explains or completely allow us to compare the effect of cousinage to alternative or com plementary explanations, itdoes support our claim that cousinage helps explain the absence of ethnic voting inMali. empirical distribution of voters along different cleav age dimensions) matter? How do political or electoral institutions interact with cleavage structures? An in novative theoretical and empirical literature recently addressed such questions (e.g., Chandra 2005; Posner 2004a, 2005), and an impressive body of observational research has been built up. Research designs similar to the one we have employed could readily complement and extend such research to illuminate the political effects of cross-cutting cleavages. APPENDIX:EFFECT OF TREATMENT ON COMPLIERS As in the text, one discussed inferential in our issue experi ment is thatsubjectsmay not perceive themselves tobe in the intended cell of Table 1?that is, the treatment condition to which theywere randomly assigned. For example, a subject might perceive a politician who we intend to be a coethnic as, say, a cousin cousin from a different ethnic group. This may be problematic because we ultimately care about how perceiving oneself as being a cousin or coethnic of a politi cian of candidates. shapes evaluations experimental crossover. an From inferential standpoint, this issue is analogous to the standard problem of CONCLUSION Social scientists have often suggested that cross-cutting cleavages may moderate the development of political conflict along any one dimension of identity or interest. We have assessed whether cross-cutting ties can ex plain the limited presence of ethnic voting inMali, an ethnically heterogenous sub-Saharan African country. In contrast to previous observational research, our ex perimental results suggest that cousinage alliances and coethnicity both positively shape voters' evaluations of candidates. Yet, due to their cross-cutting structure, cousinage ties counteract the effects of coethnic rela thus plausibly contributes to the tionships. Cousinage weak relationship between ethnicity and vote choice inMali. Our results may also help explain why ethnic politics have a relatively minor role in several other countries of theWestern Sahel zone inWest Africa. Of course, we do not mean to suggest that cousi nage alliances provide the only reason that ethnicity appears unrelated to vote choice inMali or other coun trieswhere cousinage exists. Other explanations for the limited political salience of ethnicity may be comple mentary, rather than alternative, and future research should probe the relative strength of other explana tory factors. Our experiment and our supplementary evidence simply demonstrate that there is indeed a causal effect of cousinage alliances and ethnic ties on candidate evaluations?something not easily inferred from previous research?and that the cross-cutting na ture of these ties can account for the lack of salience of ethnicity in electoral politics. The experimental design we introduce in this article could be useful for exploring other questions. For in stance, why do cross-cutting cleavages seem to inhibit ethnic voting in some settings but not others? Does the nature of the cross-cutting cleavage structure (e.g., the In a typical to evaluate a from the treatment to experiment new medical drug, not all subjectswill follow the experimen tal protocol. Some subjects assigned to the treatmentregime may refuse the drug, whereas subjects assigned to control seek may out the treatment. Crossover the control arm of the experiment tends to dilute the effects of treatmentassignment (Freedman 2006). some Under justed to recover conditions, the effect experimental of treatment data on be may compliers, ad that is, the effectof treatmenton subjects who follow the treat ment regime towhich theyare assigned.64 In our application, compliers condition are those who we intend. the treatment perceive "correctly" In posttreatment we questionnaires, asked subjects to identifythe ethnic group towhich thepoliti cian in the video belonged, and also whether the politician in the video was the subject's joking cousin. Using these questions and the self-identifiedethnicity of subjects, we are able to code whether subjects assigned to a particular treatment condition in fact perceived the politician as we intended. Table 6 treatment cross-tabulates assignment and per random as ceived treatment receipt. As the bolded cells in Table 6 show, subjects who viewed a speech by a politician from a different ethnic group could determine with substan tial accuracy whether the politician was their cousin. (Put differently,their perceptions matched the perceptions of the informants who helped us construct signment matrix.) Nonetheless, gest, cousin versa. there was some crossover to the non-coethnic, In addition, subjects speech by a coethnic treatment condition our as the bolded from noncousin cells sug the non-coethnic, condition and vice who were to view a assigned in the "wrong" themselves perceived with In general, greater frequency.65 64 See Imbens and Angrist (1994) and Freedman (2006) for discus sion. 65 These mismatches treatment assignment and perceived between treatment receipt probably occurred for several reasons. First, cor relations formore than 200 Malian last rectly classifying cousinage names is a complex and imperfect science. Second, and perhaps more important, even ifwe could create a perfectly accurate matrix of 37 This content downloaded from 141.209.100.60 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:11:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cross-cutting Cleavages TABLE 6. and Ethnic Voting Treatment February 2010 and Treatment Assignment Receipt Treatment Receipt Coethnic Cousins Treatment assignment Coethnic cousins 37 Coethnics, not cousins Cousins, not coethnics Not coethnics, not cousins Totals Coethnics, Not Cousins 69 67 26 1 0 Cousins, Not Coethnics Not Coethnics, Not Cousins 12 24 98 3 183 142 64 152 18 5 22 131 Totals 136 122 124 152 176 rows of the table report the number of subjects assigned to each treatment condition; columns report subjects' perceptions to be exposed to each themselves treatment condition, as (i.e., the columns report the number of subjects who perceived measured about the subject's ethnic and cousinage through questions relationship to the candidate). The estimation of the effectof treatmenton compliers isa compli to view speeches For one, subjects proposition. assigned over to coethnics crossed of each several conditions. other by to estimate it is reasonable the effect of cousi However, cated nage on compliers for those subjects assigned to view speeches by politicians froma differentethnic group. In that all crossover case, nearly the noncousin conditions. occurred between the cousin treatment Moreover, and assignment is strongly correlated with treatment receipt. Nearly 80% (98/124) of subjects assigned to the non-coethnic cousin con dition correctly perceived the intended treatment, whereas the same held formore than 85% (131/152) of subjects as signed to the noncoethnic, noncousin condition. Ignoring the very few such subjects who perceived the politician to be a coethnic (see the thirdand fourthrows of Table 6), we can thus estimate the effect of treatment on compliers (ETC) for subjects assigned to view a speech by a politician froma differentethnic group as follows: ETC - 4 44 _ 3 96 =1 0.72 ' 0.79 - 0.12 The numerator of the estimator in Equation timated intention-to-treat parameter, which (1) (1) is the es is calculated by subtracting the right-handcell of the second row of Table 4 from the left-handcell. The denominator is the proportion of who subjects to the non-coethnic, cousin condition or treatment assignment perceive (i.e., 98/124 assigned correctly 0.79) minus theproportion of subjects assigned to the differ ent ethnicity,noncousin conditionwho (incorrectly)perceive themselves to be viewing a speech by a joking cousin from a differentethnic group (i.e., 18/152or 0.12). 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