Conflict In Multiethnic Societies Research Articles

Who Benefits? How Local Ethnic Demography Shapes Political Favoritism in Africa

AbstractEmpirical studies show that many governments gear the provision of goods and services towards their ethnic peers. This article investigates governments’ strategies to provide ethnic favors in Africa. Recent studies of ethnic favoritism find that presidents' ethnic peers and home regions enjoy advantages, yet cannot disentangle whether goods are provided to entire regions or co-ethnic individuals. This article argues that local ethnic demography determines whether governments provide non-excludable public goods or more narrowly targeted handouts. Where government co-ethnics are in the majority, public goods benefit all locals regardless of their ethnic identity. Outside of these strongholds, incumbents pursue discriminatory strategies and only their co-ethnics gain from favoritism. Using fine-grained geographic data on ethnic demographics, the study finds support for the argument's implications in the local incidence of infant mortality. These findings have important implications for theories of distributive politics and conflict in multi-ethnic societies.

Resolving ethnolinguistic conflict in multi-ethnic societies

Language is a common underlying cause of conflict in multi-ethnic societies. Facilitated dialogue — a method of conflict mediation — is being used in countries such as Myanmar to mitigate language-based conflict, acknowledge language rights, and encourage societies to adopt a culture of dialogue.

Peace-Promoting Federalism: Making Sense of India and Nigeria

What is federalism’s impact on the transformation of violent conflict in multiethnic societies? This article looks at conflicts in India and Nigeria to study the extent to which the genesis and resolution of conflicts were related to federalism. I examine whether India and Nigeria introduced the integrationist and accommodationist mechanisms of federalism, and, if so, whether the mechanisms mutually reinforced each other. I argue that the mix of both approaches and the lack of shared rule mechanisms can be seen as an important variable in explaining the persisting violence of these conflicts and the inability of federal institutions to transform violence.

Legal Pluralism as a Source of Conflict in Multi-Ethnic Societies

This contribution takes the case of a conflict about land to show how opportunities offered by legal pluralism can be used as a political instrument and how this threatens political stability and the practice of democracy. The analysis attempts to show that it is not an extensive legal pluralism in itself which has led to ‘ethnic’ conflict, but the practice of using law as a political instrument. The outline of the ‘ethnic clashes’ of 1991 between Gonja and Nawuri in Northern Ghana takes account of the historical, social and legal context to analyse the structural roots of the conflict and to point to its broader political dimension. It shows how colonial legal concepts of territorial rule and title to land were used by local leaders to deepen and consolidate already unequal inter-group power relations in their favour. It also analyses how these legal changes ‘loaded’ their relationship with a variety of meanings, suggesting in the social domain a relationship between masters and slaves and leading on the political level to an exclusion of Nawuri leaders from modern and hybrid institutions which would otherwise have provided a link to the ‘modern’ administration. The central questions are: Is it inevitable that law in multi-ethnic societies such as Ghana becomes a source of conflict? What role is played by the state? What is the impact of the state’s legal policy? And to what extent can so-called ‘traditional’ law be reformed and rearranged if it is understood as an element of culture? These questions are considered in the light of the perception that an open approach in dealing with a plurality of law is constitutive for a democracy which is guided by the idea of legitimacy and justice.