IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v50y2020i2p757-779_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Green, Elliott

Abstract

The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, or Staatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic identity of the president), members of this group identify more with the nation, but when this group is out of power members identify more with their ethnic group. This finding has important implications for the study of nationalism, ethnicity and African politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Green, Elliott, 2020. "Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(2), pages 757-779, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:50:y:2020:i:2:p:757-779_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123417000783/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miceal Canavan & Oguzhan Turkoglu, 2023. "Effect of group status and conflict on national identity: Evidence from the Brexit referendum in Northern Ireland," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(6), pages 921-934, November.
    2. Tahiru Azaaviele Liedong, 2022. "The Liability of Tribe in Corporate Political Activity: Ethical Implications for Political Contestability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(3), pages 623-644, December.
    3. Michael A. Abebe & Yamlaksira S. Getachew & Sarah Kimakwa, 2022. "Entrepreneurs’ Ethnic and Political Identity Alignment as Determinants of Access to Government Support in Africa: A Conceptual Framework," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 46(2), pages 449-476, March.
    4. Daniel Tuki, 2024. "You’re not like us! Ethnic discrimination and national belonging in Nigeria," HiCN Working Papers 415, Households in Conflict Network.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:50:y:2020:i:2:p:757-779_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.