Building Nations Through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football
We examine whether shared collective experiences can help build a national identity, by looking at the impact of national football teams’ victories in sub- Saharan Africa. Combining individual survey data with information on official matches played between 2000 and 2015, we find that individuals interviewed in the days after a victory of their country’s national team are less likely to identify with their ethnic group than with the country as a whole and more likely to trust people of other ethnicities than those interviewed just before. The effect is sizable and robust and is not explained by generic euphoria or optimism. Crucially, we find that national victories not only affect attitudes but also reduce violence: using plausibly exogenous variation from close qualifications to the African Cup of Nations, we find that countries that (barely) qualified experience significantly less conflict in the following six months than countries that (barely) did not. Our findings indicate that, even when divisions are deeply rooted, shared experiences can work as an effective nation-building tool, bridge cleavages, and have a tangible effect on violence.
-
-
Copy CitationEmilio Depetris-Chauvin, Ruben Durante, and Filipe R. Campante, "Building Nations Through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football," NBER Working Paper 24666 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3386/w24666.Download Citation
Non-Technical Summaries
- Africans interviewed after key national team victories were 4 percentage points less likely to report a strong sense of ethnic...
Published Versions
Emilio Depetris-Chauvin & Ruben Durante & Filipe Campante, 2020. "Building Nations through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football," American Economic Review, vol 110(5), pages 1572-1602. citation courtesy of 
Related
Programs
Mentioned in the News
More from the NBER
In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals—the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, the Bulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship—as well as research spotlights, lectures, and panel videos.
