How Talking Across Ethnic and Class Divides Shapes Support for Ethnic Politics

• In Event: Bureaucrats and Identity Bias

Abstract

It is widely believed that ethnic politics and conflict are less pronounced in countries with crosscutting rather than reinforcing social cleavages. This paper argues that whether cross-cutting ethnic and class cleavages translate into cross-cutting social interaction plays an important
role in determining individual support for programmatic over ethnic politics. We examine this by implementing an experiment in Lebanon in which 720 lower and upper income Christians, Sunnis, and Shia were randomly assigned to participate in discussions that varied in their
sectarian and class compositions. We show that, relative to discussion in homogeneous groups, cross-ethnic within-class political discussion produced greater support for programmatic politics, driven by greater learning about shared preferences and less social pressure. We also demonstrate why discussion among co-ethnics from different classes or in fully diverse settings can fail to shift
support from ethnic to programmatic politics. Overall, this study reveals how interaction in different social environments can foster inter-ethnic class-based alliances or intra-ethnic class-based antagonisms, shedding new light on the foundations of support for programmatic politics in ethnically divided societies.

Authors

• Laura B. Paler, University of Pittsburgh

• Leslie Marshall, University of Pittsburgh

• Samira Ali Atallah, Lebanese Center for Policy Studies