William Gochberg
William Gochberg
Department of Political Science
University of Washington
My research focuses on economic development, property rights, the environment, and ethnic identity. I am interested in how the local-level institutions of customary communities in Africa help to explain broad patterns of property rights change, land use, the political salience of identity, and how communities respond to resource booms. My dissertation examines the social costs associated with property rights change, the community-level coordination dynamics that influence this change, and the tactics landholders employ to defend their land rights. As with any political process, the politics of natural resources produces winners and losers, and I seek to better understand how these processes are linked to identity, community, and rural livelihoods.
Type of work: Abstract
Why does land conflict along ethnic lines take place in some places and times, and not others? Political science scholarship in recent years has suggested that certain features of land tenure institutions in Africa incentivize conflict between, or conversely within ethnic groups. Yet customary leaders and communities are resource-constrained, raising the question of when they will respond to identity-based claims to land rights that are under threat.
I argue that customary leaders and communities have an incentive to prioritize the land claims of individuals who have previously demonstrated commitment to the community. Variation across communities results from 1) the structure of customary authority 2) whether land rights are more individual or communal in type 3) the costs of monitoring landholders’ contributions to the community and 4) the nature of the threat to land rights. I test institutional explanations of ethnic land conflict using original survey and interview data collected in Uganda during 2018. Western Uganda is in the midst of a substantial oil boom, resulting in high levels of competition over land. The data suggest support for the claim that the links between land insecurity, customary land tenure, and violence are contingent on the specific institutional rules that structure property rights to land.
On Dangerous Ground: Evidence on the link between land insecurity and violence
william_gochberg.pdf