The Relationship between Objective and Subjective Horizontal Inequalities: Evidence from Five African Countries

Abstract

In recent years an increasing amount of both qualitative and quantitative research has shown that the presence of severe inequalities between ‘culturally’ defined groups, such as ethnic or religious groups –or what Stewart (2002) has termed ‘horizontal inequalities’- makes countries more susceptible to a range of political disturbances, including violent conflict and civil war. Most quantitative studies that have found evidence in support of the relationship between the presence of horizontal inequalities and the emergence of violent conflicts have used an ‘objective’ measure of socio-economic horizontal inequality in their statistical models, such as a household asset index or a schooling inequality index rather than a measure of perceived inequalities. While the quantitative studies on horizontal inequalities and violent conflict have contributed enormously towards establishing the relationship between these two concepts, the operationalization of horizontal inequalities in objective terms is to some extent problematic because people act on the basis of their perceptions of the world they live in, and these perceptions may differ substantially from the ‘objective’ reality. The question to what extent objective and subjective horizontal inequalities are consistent in practice is an important empirical question, which this paper explores in five African countries: Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya.