Bridging the divide

New study shows how integrated institutions can lead diverse populations to cooperate in rebuilding countries. One of the most pressing issues in world affairs today is state building: how countries can construct stable, inclusive governments in which a variety of religious and ethnic groups coexist. Now a unique field experiment involving Muslim and Catholic students in Bosnia-Herzegovina suggests one avenue for building emerging states: The existence of integrated civic institutions such as schools, the study finds, helps foster greater collaboration across ethno-religious lines. Such a result indicates that ethnic and religious identity need not be a decisive factor governing behavior even in conflict-torn regions, and that cooperation among different ethnic groups increases when those groups have greater social exposure to each other. In the study, students from an integrated school were willing to make financial contributions to the public good that were as much as three times larger than the contributions made by students from segregated schools, among other effects. The results appear in a paper published this week in the journal Science , co-authored by MIT political scientist Fotini Christia. "We actually see experimental evidence that integration works in promoting cooperation," says Christia, an assistant professor of political science.