High minority power facilitates democratization across ethnic fault lines

Luke Glowacki (), Florian Morath and Hannes Rusch

Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract: Democratization is vital for peaceful coexistence but often fails, especially where ethnic grievances prevail. Previous research on democratization vis-à-vis ethnic conflict struggled to separate effects of institutional design from those of intergroup animosity. In our lab-in-the-field experiment unequal groups with ongoing ethnic tensions could solve collective allocation problems either democratically or aggressively. As predicted, minorities used inefficient aggression much more often. However, giving minorities high power in the democratic process substantially reduced this problem. Remarkably, removing ethnic animosity changed beliefs but did not reduce aggression. Our results demonstrate that well-designed institutions can achieve efficient, peaceful outcomes even amid intergroup hostility.

Keywords: democratization; ethnicity; intergroup conflict; warfare; peace-making; minority power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D72 D74 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inn:wpaper:2023-18

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