UCLA

In a political context where interstate wars are nearly obsolete, most African militaries have turned their attention inward to address more pressing internal security issues. The internal focus of African militaries gives a heightened importance to the relationship between the military and the civilian population, but little research has been done to understand the factors that influence this relationship. Given the importance of ethnicity in guiding political and social interactions, this research project brings together dominant themes from the study of ethnicity and civil-military relations in order to understand the connection between the ethnic composition of African militaries and the variations in trust in the military among a country’s ethnic groups. I hypothesized that in countries that perpetuate the practice of ethnic favoritism within the military, co-ethnics of the favored group will show higher levels of trust in the military than non-co-ethnics of the favored group. Conversely, in countries where there is no overt ethnic favoritism within the military, different ethnic groups will exhibit more uniform levels of trust in the military. Using Afrobarometer public opinion surveys and an expanded data set from Harkness identifying countries with ethnically-favored militaries, I conducted a cross-national comparative quantitative study to determine if ethnic favoritism in the military could explain the variation in trust patterns. Although the results are statistically insignificant by conventional standards, the p-value produced given the limited sample size is highly suggestive that ethnic favoritism in African militaries has some measure of influence over the level of trust in the institution among different ethnic groups. It is clear there are other important factors beyond ethnic identity that guide public sentiments towards the military and additional research is necessary to fully flesh out the factors that explain variations in trust in the military, especially among different ethnic groups within the same country.