Violence against Rich Ethnic Minorities: A Theory of Instrumental Scapegoating

Yann Bramoullé and Pauline Morault ()

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: In many parts of the developing world, ethnic minorities play a central role in the economy. Examples include Chinese throughout Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa and Lebanese in West Africa. These rich minorities are often subject to popular violence and extortion, and are treated ambiguously by local politicians. We analyze the impact of the presence of a rich ethnic minority on violence and on interactions between a rent-seeking local elite and a poor majority. We find that the local elite can always make use of the rich minority to maintain its hold on power. When the threat of violence is high, the government may change its economic policies strategically to sacrifice the minority to popular resentment. We investigate the conditions under which such instrumental scapegoating emerges, and the forms it takes. We then consider some social integration capturing, for instance, mixed marriages and shared education. Social integration reduces violence and yields qualitative changes in economic policies. Overall, our results help explain documented patterns of violence and segregation.

Keywords: elites; popular violence; ethnic minority; scapegoat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-sea
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01357457v2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01357457v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Violence against Rich Ethnic Minorities: A Theory of Instrumental Scapegoating (2021)
Working Paper: Violence against Rich Ethnic Minorities: A Theory of Instrumental Scapegoating (2021)
Working Paper: Violence against Rich Ethnic Minorities: A Theory of Instrumental Scapegoating (2016)
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-01357457

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().