Socially relevant ethnic groups, ethnic structure, and AMAR

Jóhanna K Birnir (), Jonathan Wilkenfeld, James Fearon, David D Laitin, Ted Robert Gurr, Dawn Brancati, Stephen M Saideman, Amy Pate and Agatha S Hultquist
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Jóhanna K Birnir: Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
Jonathan Wilkenfeld: Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
David D Laitin: Department of Political Science, Stanford University
Ted Robert Gurr: Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
Dawn Brancati: Department of Political Science, Washington University in St Louis
Stephen M Saideman: Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
Amy Pate: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland
Agatha S Hultquist: Department of Government & Politics, University of Maryland

Journal of Peace Research, 2015, vol. 52, issue 1, 110-115

Abstract: Protracted conflicts over the status and demands of ethnic and religious groups have caused more instability and loss of human life than any other type of local, regional, and international conflict since the end of World War II. Yet we still have accumulated little in the way of accepted knowledge about the ethnic landscape of the world. In part this is due to empirical reliance on the limited data in the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project, whose selection biases are well known. In this article we tackle the construction of a list of ‘socially relevant’ ethnic groups meeting newly justified criteria in a dataset we call AMAR (A for All). We find that one of the principal difficulties in constructing the list is determining the appropriate level of aggregation for groups. To address this issue, we enumerate subgroups of the commonly recognized groups meeting our criteria so that scholars can use the subgroup list as one reference in the construction of the list of ethnic groups most appropriate for their study. Our conclusion outlines future work on the data using this expanded dataset on ethnic groups.

Keywords: AMAR; ethnic groups; MAR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:52:y:2015:i:1:p:110-115

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