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Though European colonialism had a profound and lasting impact on the development of contemporary Africa, there are few studies that assess these effects empirically. This study explores one facet of the colonial legacy: ethnic conflict. Despite the pervasiveness of ethnic strife across the continent, grievance-based approaches have had only limited success in modeling ethnic conflict in Africa. Using a structural approach, we argue that the distinctive colonial styles of the British and French created fundamentally different systems of ethnic stratification, which left contrasting legacies for post-colonial ethnic conflict. Specifically, the indirect, decentralized rule of the British fostered an unranked system of ethnic stratification, while the legacy of the centralized French style approximated a ranked system. Because unranked systems foster competition between ethnic groups - which can readily spiral into conflict - we posit that the British colonial legacy is positively related to both the frequency and intensity of ethnic conflict. French colonies, on the other hand, were left with a centralized bureaucratic power structure that impeded ethnic mobilization and suppressed nonviolent ethnic challenges. Using the Minorities at Risk III dataset, we first compare the ethnic struggles faced across former British and French colonies. Next we test the impact of this colonial legacy on two facets of ethnic conflict, rebellious actions and civil war. Results indicate that, after controlling for other salient factors, a British colonial legacy is positively associated with ethnic conflict.

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a government victory, a rebel victory, or a negotiated settlement? To explore this question we present an expected utility model of the choice rebels and governments face between accepting a settlement or continuing to fight. The model implies that a settlement becomes more likely as (1) estimates of the probability of victory decline; (2) costs of conflict increase; (3) estimates of the time required to win increase; or (4) the utility from a settlement increases relative to that of victory.Factors that (1) increase one party's probability of victory; (2) increase its payoffs from victory; (3) reduce the costs of conflict; and/or (4) reduce the time required to achieve victory increase that party's probability of winning and decrease the likelihood of a settlement. We test these propositions with a multinomial choice model that correctly predicts the outcome in 86 percent of the cases. NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors are indebted to the editors and several anonymous reviewers for the suggestions on how to revise the manuscript. Any remaining errors remain the responsibility of the authors.