Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/283746 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2023/50
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Education is a public service, assumed to be highly valued by citizens, allowing politicians to use it to reward their co-ethnics. However, nation-states have also used education to create loyal citizens, leaving politicians in times of heightened threat of ethnic mobilization. This study investigates whether assimilatory national public investments in ethnic minority areas induce violence. To examine this question, we leverage the spatial and temporal variations in education infrastructure and insurgent recruitment through a difference-in-differences design, focusing on the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. We combine original archival data on the expansion of primary school provision to rural areas and geocoded data on the ethnoreligious distribution of over 30,000 villages in Turkey with data sources that provide information on insurgents' birthplaces. We find that the expansion of primary school provision in villages increased the likelihood of insurgency participation, despite its potential social mobility effect.
Subjects: 
education
mobilization
assimilation
insurgency
Turkey
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-358-1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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