Ethnic Fractionalization Research Articles

Ethnicities in Post-Communist Romania: Spatial Dynamics, Fractionalisation, and Polarisation at the NUTS-3 Level

Scholars have shown a special interest in discovering and studying the role of ethnic diversity and spatiality at the country and region levels. This study contributes to the theoretical debate on the spatial dynamics of ethnicities, with the aim of (1) determining the evolution of ethnic dynamics in post-communist Romania and (2) applying ethnic fractionalisation and polarisation indices. The study uses a mixed methods approach based on a descriptive statistics analysis and applies the fractionalisation and polarisation indices to Romania’s NUTS-3 (i.e., county) level. The findings suggest that the ethnic spatial dynamics in post-communist Romania have shown a decrease in all ethnicities due to migration and low birth rates, with the exception of the Roma ethnicity, for whom the trend is increasing. Additionally, polarisation and fractionalisation indices have different evolutionary manifestations depending on the dynamics of the ethnic groups present in certain geographical areas. Although neither of the two analysed indices has witnessed profound change at the spatial level, these small changes in spatial and short-term ethnic diversity can help us advance knowledge about co-existence in ethnically diverse societies. Higher values of the two indices are obvious in several counties where ethnic Hungarians cohabitate with Romanians and other ethnicities. This discovery can inform policy-makers to implement more policies for the further peaceful co-existence of Hungarians, Romanians, and other ethnic groups in Transylvania and other western counties in Romania. Furthermore, as the population growth trend for the Roma ethnicity is upward, Romania has to implement proper policies and build better government infrastructure to counter social inequality against the Roma people. This will help curb potential conflicts between the Roma and other ethnic groups at the local level. Finally, as most ethnicities decreased in number in post-communist times, further attention needs to be paid to the erosion of ethnic diversity in Romania because this could have a negative impact on economic development, social trust, and democracy.

A global map of amenities: Public goods, ethnic divisions and decentralization

I analyze the effects of ethnic divisions on the provision of public goods in countries throughout the world. Using OpenStreetMap data, I construct a new, global dataset that pinpoints locations of public amenities, such as schools, hospitals, and libraries. I devise two new proxies to address the variability in the completeness of such data. I find that more autonomous subnational regions with a high degree of ethnic fractionalization provide significantly fewer productive public goods. Therefore, decentralization can decrease the provision of local public goods in areas characterized by higher levels of ethnic heterogeneity than those that prevail nationwide.

Home Advantage and its Influencing Factors in FIFA World Cup Asian Qualification

To investigate home advantage in the FIFA World Cup Asian qualification, 508 matches in the group stage of World Cup qualifying in a total of five Asian Zone World Cup qualifying tournaments from 2006–2022 were analysed. It was found that home advantage exists in the Asian Zone World Cup qualifiers as a whole (59.9%), with home advantage at the regional level ranging from high to low in South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia, East Asia and Central Asia; Turkmenistan is the country with the highest home advantage, reflecting its exceptional nature. At the individual match level, three factors of Country, Subregion and Year were adjusted by putting them into a multilevel model as random effects, meanwhile, a multi-level model with home points as the dependent variable and the rest as predictor variables also fit well ( R2 = .382). The results show that time zone and climate are significantly correlated with home points after controlling for team quality (both p < .05), i.e., travel and climate were key factors influencing the Asian Zone World Cup qualifiers. Altitude, referee bias, crowd and cultural dimensions were not significant influencing factors for home advantage. As cultural dimensions that significantly affect the home advantage in domestic leagues, corruption, ethnic fractionalisation and conflict did not have a significant impact on the home advantage of the Asian qualifiers, indicating that their roles may not be applicable to international competition settings, at least in the Asian qualifiers.

Does diversity matter for development? New evidence of ethnic diversity's mediation between internal migration and economic growth across Indonesia's regions.

Migration can contribute to economic growth. Its impact on ethnic diversity may also generate socio-cultural tensions and political instability. Having said that, ethnic diversity can play a role in both promoting and hindering economic growth depending on its form and extent. This role often rests on the levels of either ethnic fractionalization (usually related to higher economic growth) or ethnic polarization (more commonly associated with lower economic growth). Such considerations raise a question about the ways ethnic diversity mediates the relationship between internal migration and economic growth. The following paper responds to that question by focusing on different regions of Indonesia. Drawing on comprehensive statistics and updated classification of Indonesia's ethnic groups, it presents new evidence on the archipelago's ethnic diversity which is cross-referenced with recent fractionalization and polarization indexes. This methodological enhancement allows the study to translate with a greater degree of accuracy the mediation of ethnic diversity on the relationship between internal migration and economic growth across Indonesia's regions than previously carried out. What emerges is a rather mixed picture of the intermediating role of ethnic diversity. There is a significant influence in various regions, but different sets of variables also modulate the relationship in others. We can also discern an identifiable link between the economic region in question, the indicators of ethnic diversity referenced, and the given rate of migration. Placed in composite relief, the findings draw attention to the uneven and complex character of Indonesia's regional development.

Exposure to Immigrants Does Not Moderate the Relationship Between Disgust Sensitivity and Opposition to Immigration

Individuals who are more motivated to avoid pathogenic infection tend to be more opposed to immigrants. Explanations for this relation emphasize lack of familiarity, with people who are more unfamiliar with ethnic outgroups being more likely to perceive them as a possible infection risk and therefore oppose immigration. Exposure to immigrants can increase familiarity with outgroup members. This suggests that exposure to immigrants attenuates the relationship between pathogen avoidance motivation and opposition to immigration. We tested this prediction in four studies using country-level ethnic fractionalization and segregation (Study 1) and proportion of immigrants at the local neighborhood level (Studies 2–4) as indicators of exposure to immigrants. Results showed that intergroup exposure did not attenuate the relation between pathogen avoidance motivation and opposition to immigration. This suggests that long-term exposure to ethnic outgroups is insufficient to make them and their customs nonthreatening for those with strong worries about pathogenic threats.

The impact of ethnic fractionalisation on labor productivity: Does firm size matter?

AbstractEthnic fractionalisation has both positive and negative consequences. We contend that the positive effects of skill complementarity in the production process apply to large firms. Because small businesses rely more on public goods and have less access to institutions, the negative effects of lower quality public goods and higher transaction costs have a greater impact on them. Consistent with this viewpoint, we find that larger firm size significantly mitigates the negative impact of higher ethnic fractionalisation on the level and growth rate of labor productivity in manufacturing firms across 84 developing countries. Evidence on the potential mechanisms is provided.

A Machine Learning Approach to Finding Factors that Lead to Environmental Friendliness

To maintain a sustainable society, environmental friendliness is necessary, an effort that all countries must take part in. The effort must be pioneered by developed nations with the resources to enact sustainable policies, reduce emissions and conserve energy, from which developing nations will follow the eroded path. Recognizing the factors that promote environmental friendliness is necessary for researchers, policymakers, and activists alike. Several past studies have examined the relationship between environmental performance and various nationwide factors such as economic strength, education, and corruption. In this paper, however, we introduce the machine learning approach Multiple-Linear Regression, allowing several variables to be used in tandem. We constructed a dataset using a variety of variables from a variety of sources, either examined in past literature or justified logically. We measured environmental friendliness through the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), and chose feature variables of Women in Parliament (%), Internet users (%), Freedom Index, Ethnic fractionalization, Technological development, Press Freedom Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, GDP per capita ($), and Education Index, and Population. We found that Multiple-Linear Regression is an effective way of measuring EPI, where several metrics indicate that EPI is almost completely determined by the feature variables. We end the study by presenting the correlations of each of the variables with EPI, and find that almost all exhibit strong linear relationships. These correlations should bring light to the characteristics of environmentally friendly countries, mainly Nordic nations.

The Effect of Accountability on the Efficiency of Local Government Expenditures

This study aims to examine the effect of accountability, as one of the governance aspects, on the efficiency of local government spending at the district/city level in Indonesia. This study uses panel data analysis with 228 districts/city government entities from 2014 to 2018. The analysis is conducted in two stages; the first stage measures the efficiency of every local government by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The second stage estimates the effect of accountability and other control variables on local government expenditure efficiency by regression using the Tobit method. The result shows a non-linear relation between accountability, which is proxied using the Indonesia Audit Board Opinion Index, and the efficiency of local government expenditure. Initially, accountability will proceed hand in hand with increasing efficiency; however, at a certain point, an increase in accountability will no longer increase the efficiency level of local government expenditure. Another control variable that positively relates to efficiency is population expenditure per capita. Meanwhile, the ethnic fractionalization index (EFI) and distance negatively affect efficiency. The results of this study have not been able to show a relation between political competition and the gender of regional heads with efficiency.

The institutional origins of state–society relations

The institutional origins of state–society relations

Ethnic Composition and Democratic Values: A Global Investigation of Citizens’ Desire for Democracy, 1995–2014

There is a rich literature on public support for democracy. However, few have investigated the link between ethnic composition and citizens’ desire for democracy. In this study we investigate the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and democratic attitudes in 91 countries in the period 1995–2014. We test this on a measure of public desire for democracy. The main independent variables are a time-variant ethnic fractionalization index and an index of ethnic polarization, based on time-series data from the Composition of Religious Ethnic Groups project. We make use of hierarchical modeling combining country- and individual-level data in order to approach this gap in the research. The main finding is that homogeneous societies show the largest degree of desire for a democratic society within established democracies while increased fractionalization and especially increased polarization is associated with a smaller desire for democracy.

Sustainable development: The impact of political risk, macroeconomic policy uncertainty and ethnic conflict

We examine the impact of political risk, macroeconomic policy uncertainty, and social risk on sustainable development for a panel covering 47 developing economies from 1991 to 2020. We present an augmented green Solow growth model linking policy risk and uncertainty to sustainable development through their interaction with pollution abatement activities. We employ a political risk index to capture the composite impact of risk factors relevant to political rule and regulation, a macroeconomic policy index to evaluate the uncertainty associated with inflation, exchange rate, and fiscal policies and an index of ethnic fractionalization to appreciate social risk. The empirical results confirm that all the risk and uncertainty factors examined exert significant negative short- and long-run impacts on sustainable development. The findings highlight the importance of risk management as a key control policy when designing sustainability policies promoting pollution emissions abatement.

One or Many? Disentangling the Puzzle of Pro-Government Militia Deployment

Why do some countries harbor pro-government militias (PGMs), while others do not? We assert that the deployment of PGMs depends on topographic, social, and political structures within which governments and rebels operate. Drawing on the concept of opportunity structures, we postulate that structural conditions within which governments are embedded in constitute a contributing factor to the existence and multiplicity of PGMs. Data from the Pro-Government Militia Dataset along with a two-stage hurdle model reveal that personalist regime type and civil wars increase the likelihood of PGM emergence. In contrast, ethnic fractionalization, onshore oil fields, drug production, number of rebel groups, and military prowess influence the number of PGMs.

Immigration, ethnic fractionalization, and the fiscal burden in the OECD

This study considers the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on government spending in 31 OECD countries over 25 years and compares the marginal effects for expenditures and revenues to approximate the fiscal burden. Results suggest that ethnic fractionalization, not immigration itself, has a negative impact on spending in the OECD. On the whole, immigrants tend to contribute more in taxes than they cause in expenditures, at least relative to the averages for the population as a whole, but this effect is reversed for immigrants from poorer countries.

Can a corporate well-being programme maintain the strengths of the healthy employee in times of COVID-19 and extensive remote working? An empirical case study.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the increase of working-from-home have drastically changed many aspects of work life, causing very negative effects on employees' physical and psycho-social well-being. Healthy organisations have healthy employees, who have at least five psycho-social strengths of engagement, self-efficacy, resilience, optimism and hope, which are reinforced by physical activity, relating to each other in a positive way and leading to numerous benefits for the company. These strengths are being weakened by the pandemic, and the aim of this empirical study is to analyse through a case study the effects of an updated corporate wellness programme in times of pandemic on these strengths of the healthy employee. The sample was of 251 employees, 91 women and 160 men. The instruments used were the International Physical Activity Questionnaire and the adaptation of the Healthy and Resilient Organization questionnaire. The results indicated that workers with high physical activity, higher seniority, well guided by supervisors, as well as a comprehensive (multi-component) well-being programme, not only physical but also psycho-social, and with the use of different digital tools (an App is not enough), can mitigate these negative effects. Whereas companies are grappling with reduced employee engagement among other harmful psychosocial and physical effects, this case study suggests that a good corporate well-being programme could help mitigate these detrimental consequences for their workforce and be helpful for the company to adapt to this rapidly changing workplace. This study considers the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on government spending in 31 OECD countries over 25 years and compares the marginal effects for expenditures and revenues to approximate the fiscal burden. Results suggest that ethnic fractionalization, not immigration itself, has a negative impact on spending in the OECD. On the whole, immigrants tend to contribute more in taxes than they cause in expenditures, at least relative to the averages for the population as a whole, but this effect is reversed for immigrants from poorer countries.

Subnational territorial reforms and state capacity: evidence from the developing world

Governments often change their internal territorial divisions to pursue either political or governance goals. Over the recent decades, territorial reforms of splitting local government units, known as government fragmentation, have gained popularity in the developing world, and further stimulate the ongoing discussion about jurisdiction size and the quality of government. Building on this stream of literature, this paper seeks to empirically examine how the design of the primary administrative division affects the overall capacity of the state to implement its policies. Drawing on a country-year panel of 132 developing countries in the 1960–2012 period, the paper documents an inverse U-shaped relationship between the degree of government fragmentation and state capacity measured by different indicators, which suggests a tradeoff in designing administrative divisions. Furthermore, the curvilinear relationship is found more pronounced in countries under a unitary government system or with a high level of ethnic fractionalization.

How does ethnic diversity affect energy poverty? Insights from South Africa

We examine the effect of ethnic diversity on energy poverty in post-apartheid South Africa after several decades of racial segregation. We use both ethnic fractionalisation and polarisation indexes along with a multidimensional energy poverty measure from a five-year South African household-level panel data. Using historical information on ethnic diversity at the provincial level as an instrument to address endogeneity, we find that one standard deviation increase in ethnic diversity is associated with a 0.272 standard deviation decrease in energy poverty. This finding is robust across several quasi-experimental econometric approaches, different measures of ethnic diversity, and alternative cut-offs used to identify energy poor households in a multidimensional construct. Further analyses reveal that ethnic diversity reduces energy poverty only among people of colour, with the largest effect observed among native Black South Africans. Our mediation analysis highlights enhanced job opportunities and increased household incomes as the potential pathways through which ethnic diversity reduces energy poverty.

Decentralization, historical state capacity and public goods provision in Post-Soviet Russia

• Studies public service delivery during Russian decentralization after the mid-1990s. • Regions with a legacy of historical state formation perform better. • Fieldwork suggests state legacies create more cohesive and accountable local elites. • Democratic decentralization can increase spatial inequalities in disparate polities. • Failed decentralization risks being reversed in favor of bureaucratic centralism. Democratic decentralization has been widely adopted across the developing world with the goal of improving local accountability and the delivery of public services. However, outcomes have varied widely depending on the degree of local-level elite capture, cohesion, and governing capacity. This article draws on data from one of the most radical recent cases of fiscal and administrative decentralization: post-Soviet Russia from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. Drawing upon detailed demographic, survey, and time-series public goods data from each of 83 districts, this article documents growing inequality in service provision over time and shows via a series of spatial regressions that a strong predictor of success in maintaining public goods delivery was the degree of historically accumulated state capacity. This effect is independent of the degree of local ethnic fractionalization, economic development, or civic association. A detailed examination of two case studies at similar levels of ethnic diversity and baseline development - Tatarstan and Buryatia – suggests that legacies of historical state formation established indigenous elites and bureaucratic capacity, resulting in stronger elite-citizen ties and accountability to local actors and concerns. The wide variation of post-decentralization trajectories in Russia, and the eventual push to recentralize control. suggests an important concern for policymakers promoting devolved governance in polities with divergent subnational legacies of historical state development. Where decentralization occurs in contexts that are not uniformly favorable to its success, both the decentralization and democracy-building aspects of devolution reforms may come under threat from bureaucratic centralism.

Institutional Arrangements and Power Threat: Diversity, Democracy, and Punitive Attitudes

This research synthesizes studies on crime and punishment, work in political sociology, and race and ethnicity scholarship in order to theorize and empirically examine the democratic foundations of group threat theory. We argue that ethnic diversity is particularly threatening when coupled with robust democratic institutions that empower individuals to pose challenges to the extant political and social order. Making use of recent measurement advances in the study of democracy, this article uses multi-level modeling techniques across 39,926 survey respondents in 27 countries from the fifth wave of the European Social Survey to test the extent to which punitive attitudes toward criminals were associated with interaction effects of an index of ethnic diversity and democratic quality. Results strongly confirm our theoretical predictions that robust democratic institutions condition the effect of ethnic fractionalization on punitive attitudes in Europe.

Linguistic diversity, official language choice and human capital

The mechanisms linking high ethnic fractionalization (ELF) to poor economic outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa remain obscure. This paper proposes that high ELF raises the costs of implementing indigenous language education policies, and that the concomitant reliance on colonial languages as media of instruction lowers human capital development, our measure for economic failure. Exploiting the fact that 101 linguistic groups in sub-Saharan Africa cross country borders that have different language-use-in-education systems, we are able to include ethnicity fixed effects in our regression estimates. This allows us to control for a large set of cultural, geographical, and environmental factors that could confound the estimates. Our within-ethnicity estimates show that even the partial use of indigenous languages in schools is associated with an economically meaningful increase in the probability of reading for individuals with seven or fewer years of schooling. Once including language-use-in education as a regressor, the coefficient for ELF in explaining lower human capital turns insignificant. Our results suggest that retention of colonial languages is an important factor in explaining economic failures in postcolonial Africa.

Outbreak: A Comprehensive Analysis of Biological Terrorism♦

Only a few studies on biological terrorism have ever been conducted empirically. Many of these focus on CBRN terrorism as a whole, rather than biological terrorism, specifically. Other accounts utilize a case- or historical analysis instead. This study serves as the most comprehensive empirical assessment of bioterrorism to date by drawing on the Profiles of Incidents involving CBRN and Non-State Actors (POICN) Database at START as well as additional databases. The databases were merged to create a database whereby both CBRN and non-CBRN cases were included for both individuals and groups. Several binary logistic regression models (1990-2016) were then executed on biological weapons pursuit. The type of actor and ideology seem to be the most important factors for predicting biological weapons pursuit, although ethnic fractionalization was also negatively correlated with biological weapons pursuit. Governance measures had variable, but negative relationships with pursuit as well. Implications and recommendations are discussed.