Testing Relationships Between Categorical Variables

For the Ottoman military-administrative elite in imperial provinces, alliances were essential to garnering respect and support among Algerian notables, legitimizing their authority, and solidifying their positions of power in Constantine. This chapter shows how data summarization and statistical tests for independence may be used to explore questions such as: How did a man’s ethnicity and origin contribute to his ability to achieve and retain high office? How did Algerian local elites exert pressure on Ottoman administrators to install and remove governors? Why were ethnically mixed Ottoman-Algerian men so famously unsuccessful, given their inherent local and imperial ties? In examining these topics, this chapter uses hypothesis tests to uncover local perceptions of Ottoman officials’ ethnicity and the extent of local elites’ influence in provincial political careers.