Diversity and Public Goods: A Natural Experiment with Exogenous Residential Allocation

This paper demonstrates the effects of ethnic and religious diversity on the quality of public spaces. Its identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of public housing allocations in France, and thereby eliminates the bias from endogenous sorting. The paper uses micro evidence of social interactions within housing blocks from the representative French Housing survey, which allows for a detailed identification of the channels through which diversity operates. Differentiating among three channels of public goods provision, the paper finds that heterogeneity in the housing block leads to low levels of sanctions for anti-social behavior and low levels of collective action to improve housing conditions, but no losses in public safety.fractionalization, public goods, collective action, discrimination

"One Muslim is Enough!" - Evidence from a Field Experiment in France

Anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread in Western countries. Yet, Muslims are expected to constitute a growing share of the total population in Western countries over the next decades. This paper predicts that this demographic trend will increase anti-Muslim prejudice. Relying on experimental games and a formal model, we show that the generosity of rooted French toward Muslims is significantly decreased with the increase of Muslims in their midst, and demonstrate that these results are driven by the activation of rooted French taste-based discrimination against Muslims when Muslim numbers increase. Our findings call for solutions to anti-Muslim prejudice in the West.discrimination, Islam, France, group salience, experimental economics, economic theory, group threat theory, intergroup contact theory

Identifying barriers to Muslim integration in France

Is there a Muslim disadvantage in economic integration for secondgeneration immigrants to Europe? Previous research has failed to isolate the effect that religion may have on an immigrant family's labor market opportunities because other factors, such as country of origin or race, confound the result. This paper uses a correspondence test in the French labor market to identify and measure this religious effect. The results confirm that in the French labor market, antiMuslim discrimination exists: a Muslim candidate is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback than is his or her Christian counterpart. A high-n survey reveals, consistent with expectations from the correspondence test, that second-generation Muslim households in France have lower income compared with matched Christian households. The paper thereby contributes to both substantive debates on the Muslim experience in Europe and methodological debates on how to measure discrimination. Following the National Academy of Sciences' 2001 recommendations on combining a variety of methodologies and applying them to real-world situations, this research identifies, measures, and infers consequences of discrimination based on religious affiliation, controlling for potentially confounding factors, such as race and country of origin.Muslim immigrants ; Integration ; France

Religion, Terrorism and Public Goods: Testing the Club Model

Can rational choice modeling explain why Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah and other radical religious rebels are so lethal? The literature rejects theological explanations. We propose a club framework, which emphasizes the function of voluntary religious organizations as efficient providers of local public goods in the absence of government provision. The sacrifices religious clubs require are economically efficient (Iannaccone (1992)), making them well suited for solving the extreme principal-agent problems faced by terrorist and insurgent organizations. Thus religious clubs can be potent terrorists. That explanation is supported by data on terrorist lethality in the Middle East. The same approach explains why religious clubs often choose suicide attacks. Using three data sources spanning a half century, and comparing suicide attackers to civil war insurgents, we show that suicide attacks are chosen when targets are "hard," i.e., difficult to destroy. Data from Israel/Palestine confirm that prediction. To explain why radical religious clubs specialize in suicide attacks we model the choice of tactics by rebels attacking hard targets, considering the human costs and tactical benefits of suicide attacks. We ask what a suicide attacker would have to believe to be rational. We then embed that attacker and other operatives in a club model. The model has testable implications for tactic choice and damage achieved by clubs and other rebels, which are supported by data on terrorist attacks in the Middle East: Radical religious clubs are more lethal and choose suicide terrorism more often, when they provide benign local public goods. Our results suggest benign tactics to counter terrorism by religious radicals.

¿Adónde va la ciencia política? Reflexiones sobre la afirmación del profesor Sartori de que «la ciencia política estadounidense no va a ningún lado»

La ciencia política sigue siendo una disciplina joven, pero la investigación dentrode ella se ha solidificado en un conjunto de programas bien definidos que ha involucradoa una comunidad internacional de estudiosos. Aquí identificaré tres de esos programasa fin de mostrar la constante vitalidad intelectual de la disciplina. Primero, en teoríanormativa, los politólogos están desarrollando las implicaciones de la Teoría de la justiciade John Rawls (1971) en un programa que ha revitalizado el liberalismo para que tengaen cuenta temas políticos importantes de nuestro tiempo. Segundo, en un programaque alguna vez estuvo insertado de manera burocrática en la «Política Estadounidense»(American Politics), los científicos políticos están dilucidando las implicaciones del teoremadel votante mediano de Duncan Black en un conjunto ampliado de países democráticoscon diferentes detalles institucionales para abordar los temas políticos centralesde representación y rendición de cuentas. Tercero, con base en amplios datos longitudinalesy transversales de los que no se disponía antes, en programas de cómputoinimaginables una generación atrás y en desarrollos teóricos en la econometría, los científicospolíticos están cumpliendo un sueño de los fundadores de la revolución conductista (Stein Rokkan, S. M. Lipset y Karl Deutsch) al explorar sistemáticamente lasfuentes de la democracia y el orden político. Ciertamente, existen otros programas deinvestigación en ciencia política, por ejemplo, en relaciones internacionales, en economíapolítica comparada y en psicología política, a los que podría hacerse referencia en esteensayo. Mi objetivo aquí, sin embargo, al dirigirme a la crítica del profesor Sartori,no es mostrar el alcance de la disciplina, sino más bien su calidad, su internacionalismoy su importancia en el mundo real. Y esto se logra mejor usando unos cuantos ejemplosselectos

Somalia: Intervention in Internal Conflict

Case Study Prepared for Intervention in Internal ConflictMassive international efforts beginning in 1992 to ameliorate the devastating effects of the Somali civil war and to reconstitute a functioning government in that country brought some notable achievements but they were overshadowed bygrievous failures. This paper in section I provides background information on the Somali conflict that precipitated the international intervention. In section II, it delineates the special problems for military intervention in the current era in civil wars like Somalia"s. In sections III-V, it develops three points, listed here, that have implications for future international interventions in civil wars. * Early decisive diplomatic attention to the Somali crisis, backed by fiscal and military threats, probably could have nipped the civil war in its bud, averting the catastrophe that followed.* The goals of the humanitarian relief mission, while impressively fulfilled, undermined the chances for a political settlement, and therefore set the stage for an ignominious exit by the international gendarmerie.* The strategic situation in the United Nations Security Council, between the leading permanent missions (the P-5) and the Secretary General (SG) creates a bias towards ambitious goals combined with paltry resources. The UN"s Somali operations reflected that unfortunate bias. In section VI, an evaluation of the international effort in Somalia is offere