Decentralization and Ethnic Conflict: The Role of Empowerment

Jean Pierre Tranchant ()

No 200705, Working Papers from CERDI

Abstract: Decentralization is increasing in all parts of the world. Assessing the efficiency of decentralization as a means to mitigate ethnic conflict is then of primarily importance. This paper builds a simple model of decentralization as an empowerment mechanism. It suggests that decentralization could promote peace conditional on a set of countries and groups characteristics. Typically, decentralization should empower minorities which are small at the national level, while representing a critical mass of the population in the regions they live in. Empirical results confirm that decentralization impacts ethnic conflict only when those conditioning factors are controlled for. Furthermore, decentralization dampens all forms of ethnic violence for groups spatially concentrated enough and/or for groups having a local majority. In contrast, it fuels protest and even rebellion for groups lacking one. The paper then highlights the crucial need to build checks and balances mechanisms at the regional level for local minorities not being harmed by the decentralization process.

Keywords: Minorities; Conflict; Decentralization; Panel Data Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2007/2007.05.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2007/2007.05.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2007/2007.05.pdf)

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:cdi:wpaper:891

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from CERDI Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vincent Mazenod ().