Globalization, political institutions and ethnic assertiveness: An empirical study of 32 developing countries

Abstract

Although there has been an ever increasing body of work that has examined the relationship between electoral rules and ethnic conflict, relatively few works have examined the effects of political institutions as a means to contain (or at least alter) the course of ethnic conflict under the conditions of globalization and economic integration. In this paper I build upon an earlier work that examined the relationship between globalization, democratization and ethnic conflict. In that piece it was found that globalization did not appear to have a direct relationship with ethnic conflict, but did appear to be related to ethnic political ‘awakening’. This article builds upon that previous work by empirically examining the effects of both globalization and institutional arrangements for 32 developing countries and 90 minority groups. Further, the paper employs a multivariate technique that evaluates the effect of globalization, components of the electoral system, parliamentarism, federalism, cultural differences and the state of the economy.