3
Section I: The Puzzle
Since 1945, two processes have inedibly marked countries: the continuing increase in the levels
of economic liberalization and the explosion of interethnic, intra-state conflict.
1
Is there a relationship
between these two processes? The conventional wisdom has answered this question in the affirmative,
and often in an intuitive manner.
The implementation of economic liberalization policies replaces previous statist economic
policies that had relied upon protectionism and subsidies to protect social groups from changes in the
terms of trade. However, increases in economic liberalization mean increases in the integration of national
economies in the international economy. This increased integration in the international economy leads to
short- term increased economic dislocation, as the old pockets of protectionism adjust to the new terms of
trade. However, this process of economic adjustment means negative income effects that force individuals
to re-examine their allegiances and loyalties to the multi-ethnic state. Individuals from ethnic groups who
can become better off by seceding, because they can prosper as a new state in the international economy,
rationally examine the chances for a successful mobilization effort along ethnic lines. Individuals from
ethnic groups who may become worse off by the secession of the affluent ethnic groups pressure the state
to prevent this secessionist movement. Political entrepreneurs emerge to lead these mobilization drives
along ethnic lines since ethnic groups tend to be territorially concentrated in most countries. Competitive
politics pit ethnic groups against each other. Consequently, secession drives disintegrate in violent ethnic
conflict.
2
In essence, the conventional wisdom has argued that the relationship between increases in the
level of economic liberalization in multiethnic countries and the propensity for violent ethnic conflict is a
positive and a linear one.
1
Since 1946 the number of sovereign countries has increased from seventy-four to one hundred and ninety two. By 1995, 87
countries had populations of less than five million inhabitants, fifty-eight less than 2.5 million, and thirty-five less than five
hundred thousand. This proliferation in the number of sovereign countries has been matched with a rapid increase in the number
of civil wars, more often than not, along ethnicity lines: as Ibrahim Elbadawi and Nicholas Sambanis (2000) show, the global
percentage of countries that have experienced a civil war has risen steadily from 7% in the 1960-64 period to 28% in the 1990-94
period (Elbadawi and Sambanis 2000, 12). Indeed, as Ted Gurr has demonstrated, “every form of ethnopolitical conflict has
increased sharply since the 1950s. The historical profile we compiled show that nonviolent political action by the 233 communal
[ethnic] groups more than doubled in magnitude between 1950 and 1990, and violent protest and rebellion both quadrupled”
(Gurr 1993, 316). These large-N statistical analyses have been complemented by a variety of regionally-focused small-N
analyses. Mitra has shown that the recent politics of South Asia have been dominated by increasingly violent and ethnically-
based violent struggles over cultural politics issues (Mitra 1995). In Africa the ethnic conflicts of the 1980s have been intensified
and the mass political mobilizations, often based on ethnic collective action organization, that precipitated transitions to
democracy have become vehicles for increased ethnic violence (Scarritt and McMillan 1995). The dissolution of the Soviet
Union created a large number of states, some of which have been engaged in bitter ethnic struggles (Brubaker 1998). In Western
Europe, the continuing development and embeddedness of the European Union’s supranational institutions has been
accompanied by an increased subnational political mobilization along ethnic lines in regions as varied as Catalonia, the Basque
country, Brittany, Scotland, Bavaria and Lombardy (Dreze 1993).
2
With the exception of the secessions of Norway from Sweden and of Iceland from Denmark in the pre-1945 and the exception
of the “velvet divorce” between the Czech and the Slovak constituent units of the former Czechoslovakia in 1991, there have
been no other secessions without some level of violent conflict.
Convention