Maintaining ethnic dominance: Diversity, power, and violent repression

Lasse Lykke Rørbæk and Allan Toft Knudsen
Additional contact information
Lasse Lykke Rørbæk: Aarhus University, Denmark
Allan Toft Knudsen: Independent researcher

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2017, vol. 34, issue 6, 640-659

Abstract: While ethnically diverse countries are generally believed to be more violent than homogenous ones, previous research has been unable to establish a clear connection between ethnic diversity and violent repression. We argue that political authorities’ tendency to violently repress their citizens cannot be explained by the ethnic composition of society per se but by the power distribution between ethnic groups. In a global sample of countries for the period 1977–2010, we find statistical evidence that the level of violent repression increases with the share of the population excluded from state power on the basis of ethnic affiliation. We combine this with a case study of the Republic of Guinea and conclude that political authorities come to see excluded ethnic groups as threats and rely on violent repression to maintain their ethnic dominance.

Keywords: Ethnic conflict; exclusion; political violence; repression; the Republic of Guinea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894215612996 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:34:y:2017:i:6:p:640-659

DOI: 10.1177/0738894215612996

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().