Ethnicity and civil war

Abstract

If a civil war begins, it is more likely to be initiated by an ethnic group than any other type of group. We argue that ethnic groups, on average, are likely to have more grievances against the state, are likely to have an easier time organizing support and mobilizing a movement, and are more likely to face difficult-to-resolve bargaining problems. We further argue that each of these factors was likely due to three pre-existing patterns associated with ethnicity. First, when political power is divided along ethnic lines, ruling elites can disproportionately favor their own ethnic group at the expense of others. This creates grievances that fall along ethnic lines. Second, ethnic groups tend to live together in concentrated spaces, sharing the same language and customs, and enjoying deep ties with ethnic kin. This means that ethnic groups, if they are aggrieved, will have an easier time mobilizing support to demand change. Third, the fact that ethnic identity tends to be less elastic than other types of identity means that credible commitments to any bargain – before and during a conflict— will be more difficult to make. The result is that ethnic groups will have a greater number of reasons, opportunities, and incentives to mobilize and fight than non-ethnic groups.

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

“…2). Although the country grouping approach as applied here does not allow for a direct quantification of the driver's importance, our results imply that the mechanisms specific to EF and conflict outbreak discussed above may play a significant role for armed-conflict outbreak following a natural disaster (18). Thereby, it is not the domain-specific factors, EF, or natural disasters occurrence alone, but their interplay that results in enhanced risk of armedconflict outbreak.…”

“…Further destabilization of Northern Africa and the Levant may have widespread effects by triggering migration flows to neighboring countries and remote migrant destinations such as the European Union. Although not highly ethnically fractionalized following the ad hoc threshold classification applied here, ethnic identities also appear to play a prominent role in the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Iraq (18). It is clear that the roots of these conflicts, as for armed conflicts in general, are case specific and not directly associated with climate-related natural disasters.…”

“…Additionally, there is a growing body of literature that reports robust indications that ethnic fractionalization is one of the key determinants of armed-conflict outbreak risk (10,(14)(15)(16)(17). Although not necessarily rooting in ethnic tension, nearly two-thirds of all civil wars since 1946 have been fought along ethnic lines (18). This prominent role of ethnicity in conflicts might be related to selective access to political power or resources that are often divided along ethnic lines (19), as well as to a high and rapid ethnic mobilization potential (20) arising from geographical clustering of ethnic groups and strong interethnic social ties (21).…”

Peace building after Civil War: A Critical Survey of the Literature and Avenues for Future Research

“…Here, the central claim is that because ethnicity is a major determinant of a group's security, status, material well-being and access to political power (Ostby, 2013), it is likely to have identifiable characteristics that allow outsiders to be excluded from public goods and a mobilising agent that can lead to political violence (Fearon and Laitin, 1996;Edward Miguel and Mary Kay Gugerty, 2005;Miguel and Blattman, 2010). Denny and Walter (2014) provide a useful review of three key mechanisms linking ethnicity to civil war: "Rebel movements are more likely to organise around ethnicity because ethnic groups are more apt to be aggrieved, better able to mobilise, and more likely to face difficult bargaining challenges compared to other groups (in Cunningham and Seymour, 2016)". Several other scholars have expressed similar views.…”

Does Peace Trickle Down? Micro-Level Evidence from Africa

“…First, we need to clearly link citizens in post-war states to the relevant government and rebel actors involved in the peace agreement in order to test the hypothesized effect of power-sharing on citizens' wellbeing. To establish such a link, we focus on African civil wars which are characterized by the prevalence of ethnic support networks (Clapham 1998;Denny and Walter 2014).…”