Polygynous Neighbors, Excess Men, and Intergroup Conflict in Rural Africa

• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Clara Neupert-Wentz,Carlo Koos
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719859636
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Polygynous Neighbors,

Excess Men, and

Intergroup Conflict

in Rural Africa

Carlo Koos

1,2,3

, and Clara Neupert-Wentz

2

Abstract

We argue that polygyny creates a social imbalance where few, economically well-off

men marry many wives and many poor men marry late or never. By definition,

polygyny produces what we refer to as “excess men.” In order to gain material

wealth, excess men are likely to raid, plunder, and rob neighboring ethnic groups.

We test this hypothesis with georeferenced data on polygyny and intergroup conflict

in rural Africa and find strong support. Drawing on Afrobarometer survey data, we

explore the underlying mechanisms and find that young men who belong to poly-

gynous groups feel that they are treated more unequally and are readier to use

violence in comparison to those belonging to monogamous groups. Our article

makes an important contribution to the peace, conflict, and development literature

by emphasizing a fundamental aspect of human life: marriage and family.

Keywords

intergroup conflict, polygyny, Africa, GIS, family, ethnicity

Social institutions have long been a focal point in the analysis and explanation of

intrastate peace and conflict. While state institutions have been studied to a large

extent in this context, the internal norms, traditional institutions, and customary laws

1

Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway

2

Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

3

School of Public Policy, University College London, London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Carlo Koos, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Jekteviksbakken 31, 5006 Bergen, Norway.

Email: carlo.koos@cmi.no

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(2-3) 402-431

ªThe Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002719859636

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of ethnic groups have not yet received much attention. Key institutions that influence

the social order of ethnic groups are marriage and family. In most societies, the

family is the smallest social entity that shapes the everyday life of people (Weber

[1922] 1980, xvii). The family typically fulfills reproductive, social, economic, and

prestige functions (Becker 1993; Murdock 1949; Hudson and Matfess 2017).

We argue in this article that the type of marriage institution practiced by an ethnic

group, monogamy or polygyny, affects the likelihood of members of that group

attacking neighboring groups. By definition, polygyny creates a social imbalance:

while some men marry several wives, rear many children, and have large families,

other men marry late in life or not at all. A common pattern is that marriage is

confined to economically well-off men in the highest tiers of society, leaving eco-

nomically deprived men unwed (Irons 1983; Mesquida and Wiener 1999; McDer-

mott 2018). We refer to the latter as excess men. In traditional rural societies where

social norms make a man’s reputation dependent on, among other things, the size of

his family, excess men fail to meet basic criteria for attaining social prestige (Hen-

rich, Boyd, and Richerson 2012, 657; Hudson and Matfess 2017, 12).

However, in our understanding, excess men will not accept the fate of remaining

bachelors. According to Hans Morgenthau, propagation is one of the main drivers of

any political action ([1948] 1985, 39). Since economic resources are key to getting

married and starting a family, excess men have incentives to acquire these resources.

When legitimate sources of income are unavailable or insufficient, excess men

become “risk-takers” (Barash 2016, 30): crime, theft, violence, and raids become

viable options. Excess men in rural areas who strive to conform to the social norms

that derive from marriage and family therefore have two basic choices: to steal from,

plunder, and raid one’s own group or to do the same to another group.

Since ethnic groups often function as extended families and have established

mechanisms to monitor and sanction mis behavior (cf. Fearon and Laitin 1996),

excess men will be more likely to raid other groups than their own. Following this

reasoning, we expect that polygyny does not necessarily increase intragroup vio-

lence but rather heightens the risk of violence for neighboring ethnic groups.

In our analysis, we examine whether the extent of borders shared with polygy-

nous ethnic groups increases a group’s risk of experiencing intergroup violence.

Specifically, we create a risk profile for each ethnic group that measures the per-

centage of total border shared with polygynous neighbors. Building on the growing

literature that analyses the long-term effect of historical institutions and politics

(e.g., De Juan and Koos 2019; Wig 2016; Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2016;

Nunn and Wantchekon 2011; Nunn 2008), we rely on precolonial data on ethnic

groups’ mode of marriage—which has been shown to correlate with current poly-

gyny rates (Dalton and Leung 2014)—to predict contemporary violent conflict

events between ethnic groups in rural Africa. Using a set of pretreatment exogenous

geographical and historical variables that could have affected both the prevalence of

polygyny and intergroup conflict (e.g., ancient wars, slave trade, and malaria pre-

valence), we show robust evidence that for groups with higher percentages of shared

Koos and Neupert-Wentz 403