Ethnic politics and Ebola response in West Africa

In 2014, the deadliest Ebola outbreaks in history erupted in West Africa and infected within a year nearly 30,000 people across the region. Besides its unprecedented human toll, the epidemic exacted significant economic losses through its spillover effect on employment, confidence, trade, and tourism. This paper examines the role of political inclusion in the vulnerability to the 2014 Ebola crisis in Guinea and Sierra Leone using a unique dataset on the ethnic composition of the ruling coalitions during the crisis. Exploiting subdistrict-level variation in Ebola incidents and assigning total infections to the majority ethnic group of the subdistrict, I analyze the effects of ethnic representation on local response to the outbreak. In an empirical analysis based on count data and linear regression models, I find that the allocation of one additional position to an ethnic group in a 30-member cabinet is associated with an 18–23 percent decline in the subdistrict-level Ebola infection. While I find no effect on the risk of infection, I show that conditional on having any cases ethnic representation is associated with fewer Ebola incidents, suggesting a significant mitigation effect. This paper advances the debate about ethnic favoritism, but unlike existing studies focusing on individual leaders such as the president or a minister, it quantifies the effects of power-sharing on vulnerability to adverse shocks in a context of multi-ethnic ruling coalitions. Institutional reforms that limit the misallocation of public goods should be accompanied by concerted efforts to design need-based targeting.