Ethnic Cleavages Research Articles

Language, Religion, and Ethnic Civil War

Are certain ethnic cleavages more conflict-prone than others? While only few scholars focus on the contents of ethnicity, most of those who do argue that political violence is more likely to occur along religious divisions than linguistic ones. We challenge this claim by analyzing the path from linguistic differences to ethnic civil war along three theoretical steps: (1) the perception of grievances by group members, (2) rebel mobilization, and (3) government accommodation of rebel demands. Our argument is tested with a new data set of ethnic cleavages that records multiple linguistic and religious segments for ethnic groups from 1946 to 2009. Adopting a relational perspective, we assess ethnic differences between potential challengers and the politically dominant group in each country. Our findings indicate that intrastate conflict is more likely within linguistic dyads than among religious ones. Moreover, we find no support for the thesis that Muslim groups are particularly conflict-prone.

What are the Consequences of Consociationalism for Sexual Minorities? An analysis of Liberal and Corporate Consociationalism and Sexual Minorities in Northern Ireland and Lebanon

Existing research on consociationalism largely debates whether or not it exacerbates ethnic cleavages. Yet, although power sharing in some circumstances can harden ethnonational identities, a correlative consequence may be to further marginalise groups outside the bounds of official inclusion. While an emerging corpus of literature looks at women and power sharing, little research has been done regarding the implications of power sharing for sexual minorities. I argue in this article that consociationalism does impact on sexual minorities in complex ways. To account for variations in types of consociationalism, I examine two divergent forms – liberal and corporate – that demonstrate differences in relation to sexual minorities. Thus, I compare sexual minorities within Northern Ireland’s liberal structure with those in Lebanon’s corporate form. I find that differences between liberal and corporate consociations generate important, albeit complicated, implications for sexual minorities.

Electoral systems, ethnic cleavages and experience with democracy

Recent studies show that the effects of electoral systems and ethnic cleavages on the number of parties in emerging democracies differ from those effects observed in more established democracies. Building on recent arguments maintaining that the quality of democracy improves with experience, we argue the reason for the differences in the findings between established and emerging democracies is that the effects of these variables on the number of parties differ according to a country’s experience with elections. To test this argument, we analyse party system fragmentation in 89 established and emerging democracies and the conditioning effects experience with elections have on the effects of district magnitude, ethnic cleavages and variables relating to the presidential party system. The results show that the effects of institutional and social cleavage variables differ substantially between emerging and established democracies, but these effects begin to approximate those seen in more established democracies with additional experience with elections.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks: Participation in an Ethnic Rebellion

Why do ordinary people take extraordinary risks and join an ethnic armed rebellion? This article tests a series of well-established hypotheses about selfish and identity based motivations and a new hypothesis based on prospect theory. It then employs a unique multimethod research strategy combining one of the most comprehensive datasets on insurgent recruitment that contains biographical information about 8,266 Kurdish militants with extensive fieldwork involving in-depth interviews with relatives of the militants to test these hypotheses. The findings show the decision to rebel is as much political as economic and social. While security concerns and expectations of benefits affect the decision to rebel, social commitments, identities radicalized by state repression, and collective threat perceptions among efficacious individuals generated by political mobilization, rather than preexisting ethnic cleavages, also lead to participation in an ethnic insurgency. The latter findings explain the durability of insurgencies with limited economic resources and their ability to attract educated fighters.

The mental cleavage of Israeli politics

In societies marked by numerous diversities, like the Jewish-Israeli one, understanding social cleavages might show a larger picture of the group and form a broader comprehension of its characteristics. Most studies concentrate on somewhat conventional cleavages, such as the socioeconomic cleavage, the ethnic cleavage, the religious or the political one; this article, by contrast, suggests a different point of view for the mapping of social cleavages within Israeli society. It claims that the Jewish population in Israel is split into two competing groups: stakeholders versus deprived. These categories of social identity are psychological states of mind in which no matter how the national resources are distributed, the stakeholders will always act as superiors, even if they are in inferior positions, while the deprived will always take the role of eternal underdog even if all of the major political ranks come under their control. This article brings about a review of over a century of ideological debates within the Zionist movement; it reveals how understanding the logic of the Israeli political discourse as a competition between the two newly defined social groups enables a better comprehension of the inherent tension between them.

Power-Sharing and Sexual Minorities: A Comparative Analysis of Northern Ireland and Lebanon

Existing research on consociationalism largely debates whether or not it exacerbates ethnic cleavages. Yet, although power sharing in some circumstances can harden ethnonational identities, a correlative consequence may be to further marginalize groups outside of the bounds of official inclusion. While an emerging corpus of literature looks at women and power sharing, little research has been done regarding the implications of power sharing for sexual minorities. We argue in this article that consociationalism does impact on sexual minorities in complex ways. To account for variations in types of consociationalism, we examine two divergent forms – liberal and corporate – that demonstrate differences in relation to sexual minorities. Thus, we compare sexual minorities within Northern Ireland’s liberal structure with those in Lebanon’s corporate form. We find that differences between liberal and corporate consociations generate important, albeit complicated, implications for sexual minorities.

Looking for a new legitimacy: internal challenges within the Israeli Left

Considering current Israeli society in terms of the asymmetric power relations and privileges experienced by its heterogeneous population, this paper aims at questioning the role played by Israeli left-wing parties and grassroots organizations since the failure of the Oslo ‘peace process’, with a focus on the aftermath of the legislative elections of 2015. In general, most of the political initiatives led by the Zionist Left can be seen to have lost the internal legitimacy they need in order to challenge the assumptions underpinning the power asymmetries. By taking account of those narrative identities excluded from the mainstream Zionist Left discourse, among which are the Palestinian citizens of Israel, Mizrahi Jews, women's feminist activists and African asylum seekers, I attempt to problematize the ethnic, national, class and gender cleavages emerging in a situation which includes some complex instances of dispossession and marginalization. In a settler colonial context such as the one prevailing in Israel, I question whether the left-wing has been able to represent and to support the rights of the most marginalized communities and to face up to the neo-liberal and ethno-nationalist drift which is gathering increasing momentum inside the country. Deploying an approach that is contrary to the predominant narrative, which addresses the parties and the grassroots groups of the Israeli Left as types of activism based on a single and homogeneous platform, I draw attention to alternative socio-political initiatives that have often been silenced by the mainstream, such as those initiated by radical left-wingers, ‘48 Palestinians, Mizrahim, feminist activists, and also more recently by African migrants and asylum seekers. In this way, the paper also deals with the necessity of providing a means of expression for the critical points of view emerging from the most marginalized backgrounds of Israeli society, a need which is underlined by a good number of my interviewees, and a need which, if fulfilled, could enable the building up of a new and broader legitimacy within the Israeli leftist political arena.

The 2014 Indonesian general election and beyond

This study investigates Lipset-Rokkan’s “freezing hypothesis” based on the contemporary Indonesia cleavages by analyzing the 2014 election together with the previous elections. This study found the endured cleavages are ethnic and aliran (literally, “stream”), which consist of the competing abangan (nominal Muslim) and santri (devout Muslim) cleavages. Both had been “frozen,” or existed latantly, during the New Order, but they revived afterwards. However, the ethnic cleavage arguably has been “melted” faster than the aliran one as the former seems to be more vulnerable to other political appeals. The aliran, in contrast, is somewhat callous due to its complex basis. This paper also suggests that, because the strength of any individual cleavage may vary from one region to another, capturing the empirically existing cleavages better may require going to regional or district levels instead of being solely reliant on a national-level study. This study underscores that the cleavages in the form of ethnicity and aliran cannot simply be abandoned in the elections in Indonesia. It is even suggested that the aliran may be one of the dimensions of the endogeneity of voters’ religio-political identity.

Ethnic Minority Policies as an Ethnic Cleavage Dimension Within Post-Communist Party Systems: Case Studies of Vojvodina Hungarians and Estonian Russians

Ethnic Minority Policies as an Ethnic Cleavage Dimension Within Post-Communist Party Systems: Case Studies of Vojvodina Hungarians and Estonian Russians

Reframing Kurtz's Painting: Colonial Legacies and Minority Rights in Ethnically Divided Societies

Minority rights constitute some of the most normatively and economically important human rights. Although the political science and legal literatures have proffered a number of constitutional and institutional design solutions to address the protection of minority rights, these solutions are characterized by a noticeable neglect of, and lack of sensitivity to, historical processes. This Article addresses that gap in the literature by developing a causal argument that explains diverging practices of minority rights protections as functions of colonial governments' variegated institutional practices with respect to particular ethnic groups. Specifically, this Article argues that in instances where colonial governments politicize and institutionalize ethnic hegemony in the pre-independence period, an institutional legacy is created that leads to lower levels of minority rights protections. Conversely, a uniform treatment and depoliticization of ethnicity prior to independence ultimately minimizes ethnic cleavages post-independence and consequently causes higher levels of minority rights protection. Through a highly structured comparative historical analysis of Botswana and Ghana, this Article builds on a new and exciting research agenda that focuses on the role of long-term historio-structural and institutional influences on human rights performance and makes important empirical contributions by eschewing traditional methodologies that focus on single case studies that are largely descriptive in their analyses. Ultimately, this Article highlights both the strength of a historical approach to understanding current variations in minority rights protections and the varied institutional responses within a specific colonial government actor.

Press and ethnic polarization in post-2001 Afghanistan: the 2014 presidential election experience

This article analyses the contents of three newspapers affiliated with the Tajik-dominated Jamiat and Shura-e-Nezar factions that were deployed during the 2014 presidential election to publicize ethno-political polarization for instrumental ends. The practice of nurturing ethnic identities serves as a microcosm of the broader context in which identity politics, besides coalition-building, rent-seeking, and patrimonial interdependencies, has become a key feature of post-2001 politics. This article focuses on how these factions used these newspapers to polarize ethnic cleavages to win legitimacy for themselves and defamation for their Pashtun-dominated rival factions – Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and the Taliban. It will be years before the ethnic mujahedeen and muhajereen and the new generation reach a mutually binding and working condition that facilitates the country's long-term stability. Reaching this condition is critical because the future of Afghanistan lies in the commitment of its people to form a united community that resolves disputes in the manner of a democratic nation.

Between entrenchment, reform and transformation: ethnicity and Lebanon's consociational democracy

ABSTRACTConsociationalism has become a key institutional mechanism for managing conflict after civil war. Proponents argue that a period of consociational influence can contribute to the erosion of ethnic cleavages and even a society where ethnicity is depoliticized. Critics, however, are sceptical of this claim and argue that consociationalism institutionalizes ethnic identities and stymies the transition to a healthier democracy. In response, proponents outline a liberal model of consociationalism which limits the pre-determination of ethnicity in social and political structures. Yet, problematically, consociations in postwar societies often provide guarantees of ethnic representation in order to entice belligerents to abandon violence for democracy. This issue of transitioning from a corporate consociation to a more liberal form requires sustained analysis. This paper examines this conundrum by examining contemporary Lebanese consociationalism. Given that ethnicity is central to debates about revising consociationalism, via qualitative interviews with Lebanese political elites and civil society activists, the paper analyses how these subjects conceptualize ethnicity in contrasting ways which generate different approaches to consociationalism but which ultimately frustrate meaningful reform. It does this by exploring various debates to entrench, reform or transform Lebanese consociationalism.

Elections, Ethnic Parties, and Ethnic Identification in New Democracies: Evidence from the Baltic States

This paper explores the conditions under which democratic elections encourage citizens to identify with ethnicity. We argue that there are two mechanisms through which elections strengthen ethnic identification. First, the stronger ethnic parties are, the more intensive, ethnically exclusive political campaigns they carry out as an election approaches, resulting in strengthening citizens’ ethnic identity. Second, ethnic party mobilization drives members of other ethnic groups to develop stronger identity to their own ethnicity because such mobilization poses a serious political threat to the out-group members. Data analysis of approximately 18,000 respondents in five waves of the New Baltic Barometer supports the hypotheses. A case study of Latvia follows to illustrate that ethnic party mobilization for elections creates ethnic cleavages among the public.

Globalization and the Ethnic Divide: Recent Longitudinal Evidence*

ObjectiveThis article investigates the impact of increasing global integration on economic growth, emphasizing its interaction with the level of ethnic heterogeneity in a society.MethodsWe perform a feasible generalized least squares estimation of a random effects model on a longitudinal sample of 103 countries taken over the period 1992–2005.ResultsWe find that economic globalization has generally had a beneficial impact on economic growth. We also find that societies marked by greater ethnic heterogeneity have gained more from global integration. Further, while ethnic heterogeneity has been a significant impediment to growth over the sample period, religious and linguistic heterogeneity have not. Finally, we find that democracies have significantly outperformed autocracies over this period.ConclusionOur results suggest that globalization may have a role in redressing the detrimental impact of ethnic cleavages in a society.

General elections 2014: ethnic outbidding and politics of ‘homelands’ in Assam's Bodoland

The 2014 Lok Sabha election marks a watershed for Indian politics. The elections in the state of Assam have been marked by interethnic violence, fuelled by issues of indigeneity and ‘illegal’ migration. This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and a hotbed for ethnic conflict. Two decades of armed struggle resulted in concessions granted to the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in Assam, in the form of a territorial council, under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. In the 2014 election, for the first time in the history of the constituency, a non-Bodo candidate won, with an impressive 51% of the vote share. The electoral outcome may be seen as a further polarization of the existing ethnic cleavage between Bodos and non-Bodos in the region. Using the theory of outbidding, it will be shown that the victory of a non-Bodo in the constituency may be seen as an outcome of a history of inter-group conflict in the region as well as intra-group rivalry among various factions of the Bodo leadership. Further, this case also illustrates that the propensity of the outbidding effect to foment inter-ethnic violence is greater in contexts where political institutions (in this case autonomous/territorial councils) encourage a singular axis of identity as a basis of mobilization. In conclusion, the paper discusses the implications of this election result for the politics of ‘ethnic homeland’ in Assam.

Mobilization, Flexibility of Identity, and Ethnic Cleavage

In modern states, mobilization policy has been used to awaken people to new ideas such as national identity, industrial capitalism, and civic society. However, it has long been debated whether mobilization in new countries or in countries under reconstruction creates an integrated identity or results in fragmentation of various ethnic groups. Although the idea that identity is not immutable but malleable is now widely accepted in political science, sociology, and other social sciences, the degree to which identity can be reconstructed once it has been mobilized remains unclear. This study employs an agent-based model to address questions regarding the relationship between governments' mobilization and the integration of identity in countries. The analysis suggests that more rapid mobilization by governments stabilizes a greater ethnic cleavage. This result is found to be robust by changing parameters and by modifying the specifications of the model. In addition, the analysis presents two other implications. The first is that a spiraling fragmentation of identity might occur if governments fail to accommodate people. The second is that in an age of advanced communication, governments need more assimilative power than before in order to secure integration. The analysis suggests that future research about identity formation in countries should consider the rigidity as well as the flexibility of identity.

The Normative Underpinnings of Pakistan’s Military

The number of books devoted to the study of Pakistan's military continues to grow, and with good reason. Any understanding of Pakistan's foreign and security policy begins with an appreciation of the role played by the country's premier political institution, the army. The volumes by C. Christine Fair, T.V. Paul, and Aqil Shah add richly to the literature on the army and militarism in Pakistan. As in other studies, the preoccupation of Pakistan's military with the perceived threat of India looms large in the authors' analyses. The adversarial nature of civil-military relations and the military's mercurial relations with the United States are also familiar themes. These three books stand apart, however, in the weight given to strategic culture in forming attitudes and behavior within Pakistan's military. Fair finds the army's ideology and mentality necessary for explaining the biases in Pakistan's foreign policy. Shah focuses on those beliefs and mindsets in the army that lead to its repeated interventions against civilian authority. Paul shows how the military's thinking, particularly about India, has prevented the country from emerging as a development-oriented state and has instead turned it into a garrison state.While employing a similar normative approach, the books frame their analyses around different leading questions. Fair asks why after almost seven decades Pakistan has been unable to accommodate itself to India's regional preeminence and has stayed committed to a revisionist foreign policy regarding Kashmir, despite the detrimental consequences. She finds the answer in Pakistan's apprehensions about its larger neighbor that are driven more by ideology than security. It is a military fixed on an image of India as an aggressive power whose aim is to dominate Pakistan and the South Asian region. Fair describes a military that uses Pakistan's founding national ideology, Islam, to unify the country against India's supposed existential threat.Paul is most concerned about why Pakistan has remained a security state and has failed to move toward becoming a sustainable democracy. After explaining the historical and sociological reasons behind this failure, he argues that in large part what perpetuates military dominance is war preparation that has siphoned off the country's scarce resources and distracted its citizens from demanding economic and social reforms. Paul points to the state's execution of U.S regional strategic objectives in return for aid as having disincentivized the political elite from taking the route to sustainable economic growth and political reform.Shah explores why the military has repeatedly intervened in the country's political affairs. Drawing on historical evidence, he traces the expansion of authoritarianism to nation-building problems and the conception of members of the army's higher officer corps about the appropriate institutional role of the military in national security, governance, and democracy. Shah finds that the perceived security threat from India, coupled with ethnic and linguistic cleavages during Pakistan's formative years, led to the military's rapid modernization and development at the cost of economic growth and civil-institution building. Periods of instability under civilian rule strengthened the army's belief in itself as the protector of the state against external threats, ethnic fragmentation, and incompetent and corrupt politicians.In the best sense, these are academic books. They ground their analyses solidly within the political science literature and international relations theory. All three books provide deep historical context and single out the importance of political events in the shaping of the military's frame of mind. Largely free of jargon, they are written for both a well-informed and general readership. Methodologically, there are commonalities. Fair and Shah are particularly interested in what the military says about itself as recorded in its own publications and through interviews. …

The organizational ecology of ethnic cleavages: The nonlinear effects of ethnic diversity on party system fragmentation

The conventional wisdom regarding party system fragmentation assumes that the effects of electoral systems and social cleavages are linear. However, recent work applying organizational ecology theories to the study of party systems has challenged the degree to which electoral system effects are linear. This paper applies such concepts to the study of social cleavages. Drawing from theories of organizational ecology and the experience of many ethnically diverse African party systems, I argue that the effects of ethnic diversity are nonlinear, with party system fragmentation increasing until reaching moderate levels of diversity before declining as diversity reaches extreme values. Examining this argument cross-nationally, the results show that accounting for nonlinearity in ethnic diversity effects significantly improves model fit.

The Problem of Law and Order in Muslim Civilisation: A Hobbesian Perspective

As several Muslim countries have fallen into the set of failed states, one would be interested in searching for an explanation of anarchy within the Islamic civilisation. Religious and ethnic cleavages together with rebel fighting has turned countries like Libya, Mail, Nigeria, Somalia, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan into anarchic societies without functioning government. The lack of law and order also plagues Egypt, Bahrain and Bangladesh. Why is there now so much political violence in the Moslem world? The sufferings of ordinary Muslims from government breakdown and sectarian clashes as well as rebel fighting are such that many people have to leave and live elsewhere.

Why Factions Switch Sides in Civil Wars: Rivalry, Patronage, and Realignment in Sudan

Side switching by armed groups is a prominent feature of many civil wars. Shifts in alignment have far-reaching consequences, influencing key outcomes such as civil war duration and termination, military effectiveness, levels of civilian victimization, and state-building prospects. In Sudan's wars, ideological and ethnic cleavages have not influenced factional alignments nearly as much as one might expect given the prominence of clashing political projects and ethnically organized violence in southern Sudan and Darfur. Recent explanations highlighting the role of territorial control, factional infighting, or relative power considerations also have limited value. In many wars fought in weak states characterized by low barriers to side switching, two mechanisms explain patterns of collaboration and defection: first, political rivalries that lead actors to collaborate in exchange for military support in localized struggles; and second, patronage-based incentives that induce collaboration for material gain. A nested analysis drawing on original data from wars in southern Sudan and Darfur supports this argument. The findings have implications for understanding alignments in civil wars, the role of weak states in counterinsurgency, and ethnic politics more generally, as well as policy relevance for factionalized civil wars.