Ethno-Nationalist Dyads and Civil War

Lars-Erik Cederman, Halvard Buhaug and Jan Ketil Rød
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Lars-Erik Cederman: Center for Comparative and International Studies ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Halvard Buhaug: Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway
Jan Ketil Rød: Department of Geography Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway and CSCW, PRIO

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2009, vol. 53, issue 4, 496-525

Abstract: Previous quantitative research on ethnic civil war relies on macro-level proxies in an attempt to specify the conditions under which ethnic minorities rebel. Going beyond an exclusive focus on minorities, the present study employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a way to model ethnic center—periphery dyads that confront governments with excluded groups. We construct and analyze a new dataset of geo-referenced politically relevant ethnic groups, covering the entire world during the period from 1951 through 2005. Our results show that the conflict probability of marginalized groups increases with the demographic power balance compared to the group(s) in power. Furthermore, the risk of conflict increases with the distance from the group to the capital, and the roughness of the terrain in the group's settlement area. We also find that while the results for demographic group strength hold for all ethnic civil wars, the geographic factors apply for territorial ethnic conflicts only.

Keywords: civil wars; ethnic conflict; nationalism; geographic information systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:53:y:2009:i:4:p:496-525

DOI: 10.1177/0022002709336455

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