Je suis un patriot! An experimental analysis of soccer, ethnicity, and nationalism amongst the Akan in Côte d’Ivoire

This study will examine the degree to which Africans have nationalist attitudes versus ethnic based views of life. Since independence swept Africa in the late 1950s, many scholars and policymakers have thought that nationalist identities were weak at best in Africa. Many nationalist movements indeed fell apart very quickly after independence was granted and identities were instead it seemed about ethnic identities. Ethnicity in Africa has been shown to affect a number of important processes including economic growth, conflict, and voting, and often to the detriment of promoting development in general. The Ivory Coast is a good example as it has seen electoral violence and broad-based policies of exclusion that have fallen sharply along ethnic lines in the past. Understanding the determinants of broader nationalist attitudes versus more parochial ethnic attitudes is critical for African political and economic development. Existing research focuses on attitudes across ethnic groups. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature as it focused on attitudes both across and within an ethnic group, namely the Akan in the Ivory Coast. As a meta-ethnicity, the Akan have sub-groups in both Ghana and the Ivory Coast. This study will examine three groups including the Agni, Baoule, and Nzema and the degree to which their identities fall along nationalist versus ethnic lines. All are Akan but of different sub-ethnicities. Do identities change as they are presented with different treatments about a series of questions regarding their sub-group. Block sampling will be used within the cities of Aboisso, Bassam, and Yamoussoukro serving as blocks for the Agni, Nzema, and Baoule respectively. Blocks will be randomized with four treatments: one treatment will be a statement from the most famous Ivorian soccer player Didier Drogba about living together as all Ivorians following the 2006 World Cup, and the other treatment will be famous people from each subgroup including Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Baoulé treatment), Freddy Meiway (Nzema/Apollo treatment), Dr. Eugène Aka-Aouélé (Agni treatment). A control group will receive no treatment. Outcomes will be a series of questions about attitudes toward three questions about the Ivory Coast and then finally a question about making a donation to a local versus national orphanage. Experiments will begin on 9/25 until 10/15.