Explaining Violent Intra-Ethnic Conflict: Group Fragmentation in the Shadow of State Power
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Authors
Warren, T. Camber
Troy, Kevin K.
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2015-04
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Abstract
Despite significant advances in the disaggregation of the study of civil conflict and inter-ethnic violence, intra-ethnic violence remains understudied. In this paper, we present the first systematic, cross-national analysis of the conditions that promote violent, fragmentary conflict within politically active ethnic minorities. We propose a model of intra-ethnic conflict in which collective violence is produced by the interaction between sub-group entrepreneurs and the suppressive actions of the state. This two-level model predicts a curvilinear relationship between the relative size of an ethnic minority and its probability of experiencing large-scale intra-ethnic conflict. Additional hypotheses based on the proposed causal mechanism are also posited. These hypotheses are tested with data drawn from a global sample of politically active ethnic minorities, for the period 1990 - 2006, using a combination of parametric and semi-parametric regression techniques. The results strongly confirm the predicted curvilinear relationship, while also demonstrating that the specific shape of this relationship shifts in predictable ways under varying social and political contexts.
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Article
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pre-print, forthcoming, Journal of Conflict Resolution
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Defense Analysis (DA)
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Portions of this research were funded by support from the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University, and the Center for "Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems" at ETH Zurich.
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Forthcoming, Journal of Conflict Resolution
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.