Rational choice and progress in the study of ethnic conflict: A review essay

Security Studies

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 178-207

  Kaufmann, Chaim ^a  

^a LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 29244438468     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410591002554     Document Type: Review

References (118)

1. Important earlier works include Walker Connor, "Nation-building or Nation-destroying?" World Politics 24, no. 3 (April 1972): 319-55;
2. Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974);
3. Donald R. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
4. Anthony J. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991);
5. and Milton J. Esman, Ethnic Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
6. Although the technical meanings of the terms "ethnic," "ethnoreligious," "communal," and "national" are not identical, it is becoming an increasingly standard shorthand to refer to the whole field as the study of "ethnic conflict."
7. A third major research program on sources of nationalism - modernization - relies heavily on technological and economic determinism as explanatory mechanisms. Modernization has been used to explain episodes of ethnic violence, but less often than the other two approaches. See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
8. Although all three of the other approaches (with the exception of Petersen's concept of "rage") can be seen as "rationalistic" in a broad sense, they do not adhere rigorously to the hard microrationality assumptions at the core of the rational choice program.
9. Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: Norton, 1978).
10. Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 91-196.
11. Research programs with more inductive content, such as the other three main ones on ethnic conflict, are less vulnerable to such wide anomalies, though at the cost of reduced transportability to wide varieties of problems. We are not likely to see essentialist or realist explanations of, say, currency panics.
12. All theories simplify and, in the process, lose information. One way of describing the main weakness of the rational choice approach to ethnic conflict is that it begins by throwing away more information than necessary, much of which is retained and used productively by one or more of the other approaches.
13. Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 45-49, 59-77.
14. This is necessary because the net benefits of most ethnic conflicts are less than zero.
15. Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 60-62,70.
16. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 115ff. Hechter has in mind mainly the pursuit of material values, but admitted the possibility of the pursuit of cultural values defined by the national identity itself, such as efforts to encode dietary prohibitions in law Such instances, however, beg the question of the rational bases of such cultural preferences.
17. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism, Ibid., 125.
18. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism, 125, Ibid.
19. Hechter could get part of the way out by assuming that people tend to form voluntary associations with neighbors and that members of ethnic groups tend to be regionally concentrated, but then the correlation with ethnicity would be spurious. We would then have a theory of regional, not nationalist, mobilization.
20. Robert Bates, Rui de Figueiredo, and Barry Weingast, "The Politics of Interpretation: Rationality, Culture, and Transition," Politics & Society 26, no. 2 (1998): 222-23, 244-45, 250.
21. Which Walter describes as following the work of Laitin and Fearon (Walter, Committing to Peace, xiii).
22. Works considered in this essay include James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996): 715-35;
23. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence since 1945," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1999;
24. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75-90;
25. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?" World Politics 54, no. 1 (2001): 99-118;
26. and Stathis N. Kalyvas, "The Ontology of 'Political Violence': Action and Identity in Civil Wars," Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475-94.
27. Additional important works include James D. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict," The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict.
28. and Timur Kuran, "Ethnic Dissimilation and Its International Diffusion," both in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 107-26, and 35-60.
29. respectively; Rui J.P. de Figueiredo, Jr., and Barry R. Weingast, "The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict," in Civil War, Insecurity, and Intervention, ed. Jack L. Snyder and Barbara F. Walter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 261-302;
30. Hechter, Containing Nationalism;
31. and Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization 56, no. 2 (2002): 263-96.
32. Or, sometimes, as dupes who do not realize how their interests are being hijacked - a position similar in some ways to the older, strong form of constructivism.
33. Walter, Committing to Peace, 89.
34. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," 724.
35. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," Ibid., 717-21.
36. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," Ibid., 730, 718.
37. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," Ibid., 723. Even when such accidents occur, however, the usual incentives should push the parties back toward the cooperative equilibrium. To explain why this does not always happen, Fearon and Laitin refer to the possibility of "self-fulfilling expectations" of escalation (730), but do not offer an account of how or when this might occur.
38. Up to the extreme of suicide terrorism. See Robert A. Pape, "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," American Political Science Review 97, no. 3 (2003): 343-61.
39. Mia M. Bloom, "Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Outbidding," Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 1 (spring 2004): 61-88, shows that Palestinian terrorist groups have often gained rather than lost in-group support when they have escalated attacks on Israelis.
40. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," 715.
41. Fearon and Laitin, "Weak States, Rough Terrain," 24.
42. They also mention that "individuals could gain psychic satisfaction from supporting a group cause," that they do not claim that "rebel leaders are all just political opportunists who strike a national pose to fulfill other goals," and that "rebel movements that credibly espouse a commitment to obtaining public goods for the minority" could have an advantage. The analysis, however, proceeds without reference to these considerations. Fearon and Laitin, "Weak States, Rough Terrain," Ibid., 23, 37, 40.
43. Fearon and Laitin, "Weak States, Rough Terrain," Ibid., 33, 37-38. The authors mention the possibility that the government's ability to discriminate could vary, but they make no further use of this insight.
44. Fearon and Laitin, "Weak States, Rough Terrain," Ibid., 40, 42.
45. There is an unstated assumption that active rebels have such great advantages in force and in coordination that nonrebels cannot possibly defend themselves. This is sometimes true, but where the government arms loyal militias or where there are pre-existing tribal or clan martial traditions, it may not be.
46. Walter shares with Posen and some other structuralists a concern for security dilemmas, especially when central institutions are weak or unreliable. Walter, however, sees the dilemma as driven by the inherent incentive for actors in bargaining games to cheat, whereas structuralists see the severity of such dilemmas as variable depending on factors such as population geography, memories of conflict history, and group mobilization rhetoric. See the discussion below.
47. Walter, Committing to Peace, 20-21, 33.
48. Altogether, Walter omits at least eighteen cases, all ethnic wars: Yugoslavia 1941-45, Lithuania 1944-49, Ukraine 1944-52, India 1946-47, Palestine 1947-48, China (vs. Tibetans) 1950-51, China 1959, India (vs. Nagas) 1952-75, Indonesia (Irian Jaya) 1964-96, Ethiopia 1967-91, India (vs. Tripuras) 1975-89, Indonesia (Aceh) 1977-99, Indonesia (East Timor) 1975-99, Bangladesh 1975-89, Nigeria 1980-84, India (Kashmir) 1989-, Iraq (vs. Shi'ites) 1991, and Kenya 1992.
49. Walter does not count in her favor one case that she could: the de facto secession, assisted by Russia, of South Ossetia from Georgia.
50. Conflicting findings on this can be found in Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild, "Stabilizing the Peace after Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables," International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 183-208;
51. and Mark Peceny and William Stanley, "Liberal Social Reconstruction and the Resolution of Civil Wars in Central America," International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 149-82.
52. Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars," 107;
53. and Kalyvas, "Ontology of 'Political Violence'."
54. Kalyvas, "Ontology of 'Political Violence'," 472, 479.
55. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "The Logic of Violence in Civil War," unpublished paper, 2000, 27.
56. Or perhaps even more, since in-group members are likely to have more past interactions creating individual grievances, better information on who is worth looting, and easier access to each other.
57. Ibid., 27.
58. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis; History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 265.
59. For instance, the American "Phoenix" program targeting Viet Cong leaders was judged quite effective, but it also created considerable opportunities for extortion as a side effect.
60. Toft, Geography of Ethnic Violence, 142;
61. Roy Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993," American Political Science Review 89, no. 3 (1995): 681-90;
62. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, "International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis," American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (2000): 778-801;
63. and Nicholas Sambanis, "Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?" Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (2001): 259-82.
64. David T. Mason and Patrick J. Fett, "How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach," journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 4 (1996): 546-67, found no differences in the likelihood of settlement but speculate that this may be due to two countervailing differences between ethnic and non-ethnic wars, in divisibility of stakes on the one hand and in enforceability of settlements on the other.
65. Bates, Bates, de F'igueiredo, and Weingast, "The Politics of Interpretation," 250.
66. Ashutosh Varshney, "Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality," Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (2003): 86.
67. Seminal works include Edward Shils, "Primordial, Personal, and Sacred Ties," British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957): 130-45;
68. and Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States," in Old Societies and New States; The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963).
69. For instance, Andrew Wachtel showed that although Serbian nationalist tradition dates the origin of the nation to the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, the communal consciousness we recognize today did not exist until it was constructed through literary and political efforts, mainly in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
70. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 3.
71. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, Ibid., 22.
72. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 22, 25-26, 31-32.
73. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 22-23, 36. Horowitz makes a similar point with regard to ethnic riots. See below.
74. Ronald G. Suny, "Why We Hate You: The Passions of National Identity and Ethnic Violence," unpublished paper, 2003.
75. takes a position between those of Petersen and Kaufman.Important slightly earlier contributions include Jack L. Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000)
76. which explains why elites in democratizing states often have incentives to whip up nationalist conflict, and V. P. Gagnon, Jr., "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia," International Security "19, no. 3 (1994/95): 130-66, which shows how Slobodan Milosevic did so.
77. Seminal works include Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics;
78. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976);
79. and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
80. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, 6.
81. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, ibid., 30-31, 206.
82. A point that is also emphasized by Toft (see below). Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, 25, 30-32, 206.
83. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, 32-34.
84. For such an effort, see David Mendeloff, "Truth-Telling and Mythmaking in Post-Soviet Russia: Pernicious Historical Ideas, Mass Education, and Interstate Conflict" Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001.
85. Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press), 1980.
86. Byman, Keeping the Peace, 118-21.
87. Byman, Keeping the Peace, 99.
88. Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 27-47.
89. Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 136-75.
90. See also William Rose, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict: Some New Hypotheses," Security Studies 9, no. 4 (summer 2000): 1-51.
91. Toft, Geography of Ethnic Violence, 21-31, 39.
92. Chaim Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century," International Security 23, no. 2 (1998): 120-56;
93. R. William Ayres and Stephen Saideman, "Is Separatism as Contagious as the Common Cold or as Cancer? Testing International and Domestic Explanations," Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 6, no. 3 (2000): 91-113;
94. Nicholas Sambanis, "Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature," World Politics 52, no. 3 (2000): 437-83;
95. and Stephen Saideman, "The Ethnic Security Dilemma, Deterrence and Group Concentration," unpublished paper, 2003.
96. Alexander Downes, "The Holy Land Divided: Defending Partition as a Solution to Ethnic Wars," Security Studies 10, no. 4 (2001): 59-116.
97. This can arguably be considered a fifth separate research program. Varshney cites Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977);
98. and Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, as seminal works.
99. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, 6.
100. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, 6-7, 147-53.
101. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, 153-54.
102. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 10.
103. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 10-11.
104. This term is from Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
105. The two authors also rely on a shared data set which they collected jointly.
106. Wilkinson, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 54-57.
107. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, 13-14, 476, 194. When the group that is the main focus of grievance is too powerful or not accessible, however, targeting is sometimes displaced onto a more available group, a phenomenon similar to Petersen's concept of "rage."
108. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, 128-29.
109. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, 267, 266.
110. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, 74-75, 91.
111. Petersen, Understandmg Ethnic Violence, 268-71.
112. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds, 13, 39-44.
113. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 293-95.
114. Byman might predict exceptions where cultural differences are not wide and assimilation pressures are applied with both heavy coercion and high levels of skill.
115. At least on the part of the dominant community; oppressed minorities may welcome any guarantor against the majority. In Afghanistan in 2001, the minorities making up the Northern Alliance welcomed U.S. intervention against the dominant Pashtuns; since 2003, however, as the U.S.-supported government has increasingly reached out to the Pashtun community, leaders of the other communities have become more suspicious of the United States. We can predict that if and when the Sunni insurgency in Iraq is defeated, Iraqi Kurds will continue to welcome an American military presence while the majority Shi'ite community will demand U.S. withdrawal.
116. Walter, Committing to Peace, 167-68.
117. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," 88-89.
118. See Sambanis, "Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?" 279-80, for comments on the limitations of his own data set.