Political Tolerance & Civic Engagement: Evidence from an RCT in Ethiopia

• In Event: New Insights on NGOs in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

In many countries, youth face unique social and economic challenges. However, youth civic and political engagement--especially with formal institutions--is often low relative to older generations. Increasing youth engagement can render government more responsive to their needs. However, youth mobilization has also been associated with instability in some contexts. In Ethiopia, universities have been a frequent site of inter-ethnic conflict among students. Working with a local NGO, we implement workshops designed to increase civic engagement and reduce conflict through structured social contact. Specifically, we use interactive forums to increase civic engagement by connecting youth with politically active peers and members of Ethiopian government and civil society and providing them with actionable opportunities to participate in civic life. At the same time, these forums deploy inter-ethnic social contact and a curriculum emphasizing common youth and national identities. Using a randomized control trial design, we evaluate the impact of these Tolerant Engagement Forums (TEFs) on students’ engagement and cohesion. We find that students in the treatment group are significantly more likely to have engaged with civil society organizations over the 4-month period after the intervention and more frequently report an intention to pursue employment in the civil society sector after graduation. We do not find evidence that the intervention increased engagement with government or increased social cohesion. These results reinforce findings from other contexts suggesting that low levels of youth participation do not reflect low levels of interest, and suggest that low-cost, light-touch interventions can significantly increase certain types of youth engagement. However, increasing social cohesion in divided societies remains a challenge.

Author

• Juan Fernando Tellez, University of California, Davis