Comparing ethnic conflicts: Common patterns, shared challenges

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

Volumn 15, Issue 3-4, 2009, Pages 261-279

  Coakley, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COEXISTENCE; COMPARATIVE STUDY; ETHNIC CONFLICT; ETHNIC MINORITY; ETHNICITY; ETHNOPOLITICS; LANGUAGE; POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY; TWENTY FIRST CENTURY;

BELGIUM; BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA; CYPRUS; LEBANON; NORTHERN IRELAND; SOUTH AFRICA; SPAIN; SRI LANKA; UNITED KINGDOM;

EID: 77951661344     PISSN: 13537113     EISSN: 15572986     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13537110903389320     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. See Charles C. Herod, The Nation in the History of Marxian Thought: The Concept of Nations with History and Nations without History (The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976).
2. Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
3. Roman Rosdolsky, Engels and the "Nonhistoric" Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848, translated and edited by John-Paul Himka (London: Critique Books, 1986).
4. Ronaldo Munck, The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism (London: Zed Books, 1986).
5. The outstanding corpus of literature in this area is the series Studies in Political Development, sponsored by the US Social Science Research Council, in which nine volumes appeared between 1963 and 1978. Though there was a great deal of variation from one contributor to another, the dominant perspective on the progressive character of the "nation-building" enterprise is summarized in, for example, Lucian W. Pye, "Introduction: Political Culture and Political Development," in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 3-26.
6. For an overview, see Howard J. Wiarda, "Rethinking Political Development: A Look Backward over Thirty Years, and a Look Ahead," Comparative Studies in International Development, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1989), pp. 65-82.
7. For early examples, see Jan Auerhan, Die sprachlichen Minderheiten in Europa (Berlin: Hensel, 1926).
8. Ewald Ammende (ed.), Die Nationalitaten in den Staaten Europas: Sammlung von Lageberichten (Wien: Wilhelm Braum̈uller, 1931).
9. Wilhelm Winkler, Statistisches Handbuch der Europ̈aischen Nationalitaten (Wien: Wilhelm Braum̈uller, 1931).
10. and Otto Junghahn, National Minorities in Europe (New York: Covici, Friede, Inc., 1932).
11. A later wave is represented by Manfred Straka, Handbuch der europ̈aischen Volksgruppen (Wien, Stuttgart: Wilhelm Braum̈uller, 1970).
12. Meic Stephens, Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1976).
13. and Jochen Blaschke (ed.), Handbuch der westeurop̈aischen Regionalbewegungen (Frankfurt-am-Main: Syndikat, 1980).
14. The Europa World Yearbook (1959-), the Statesman's Yearbook (1864-), and the CIA's World Factbook (1975-) are among the more widely used examples.
15. Reflecting the multinational character of their state, a large volume of work has been conducted by Soviet scholars, including most notably S. I. Bruk and V. S. Apenchenko (eds.), Atlas Narodov Mira [Atlas of the Peoples of the World] (Moscow: Institut Etnografii, Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1964).
16. Other examples include David Levinson (ed.), Ethnic Relations: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 1994).
17. and Joseph R. Rudolph, Jr. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Modern Ethnic Conflicts (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).
18. Examples are the Minority Rights Group (see www.minorityrights.org), the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a Christian organization that maintains a vast database on languages and language use (see www.ethnologue.com), and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which maintains an enormous database on religions and ethnolinguistic groups, the World Christian Database (see www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd).
19. Joseph H. Greenberg, "The Measurement of Linguistic Diversity," Language, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1956), pp. 109-15.
20. Stanley Lieberson, Guy Dalto, and Mary Ellen Johnston, "The Course of Mother-Tongue Diversity in Nations," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 81, No. 1 (1975), pp. 34-61.
21. Stanley Lieberson, "An Extension of Greenberg's Linguistic Diversity Measures," Language, Vol. 40, No. 4 (1964), pp. 526-531.
22. Douglas W. Rae and Michael Taylor, The Analysis of Political Cleavages (London: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 22-44.
23. Charles Lewis Taylor and Michael C. Hudson, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 21, 216.
24. Like many of their successors, Taylor and Hudson used the Soviet collection (Bruk and Apenchenko, Atlas) as their starting point. The same index was also used as a control variable by economists analyzing the impact of corruption on economic growth and in analyzing the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth in Africa.
25. see Paolo Mauro, "Corruption and Growth," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 110, No. 3 (1995), pp. 681-712.
26. and William Easterly and Ross Levine, "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 112, No. 4 (1997), pp. 1203-50.
27. For a more critical assessment of the quality of the Soviet data, see Benjamin Reilly, "Democracy, Ethnic Fragmentation, and Internal Conflict: Confused Theories, Faulty Data, and the 'Crucial Case' of Papua New Guinea," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2000-01), pp. 162-85.
28. Anthony Annett, "Social Fractionalisation, Political Instability, and the Size of Government", IMF Staff Papers, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2001), pp. 561-92.
29. Philip G Roeder, Ethnolinguistic Fractionalisation (ELF) Indices, 1961 and 1985 (2001); available weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/elf.htm (accessed 30 Oct. 2009)
30. James D. Fearon, "Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country," Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2003), pp. 195-222.
31. Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat, and Romain Warcziarg, "Fractionalization," Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2003), pp. 155-94.
32. David B. Barrett (ed.), World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World AD 1900-2000 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1982).
33. Daniel N. Posner, "Measuring Ethic Fractionalisation in Africa," American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2004), pp. 849-63.
34. Shaheen Mozaffar, James R. Scarritt, and Glen Galaich, "Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages, and Party Systems in Africa's Emerging Democracies," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 3 (2003), pp. 379-90.
35. Lars-Erik Cederman and Luc Girardin, "Beyond Fractionalisation: Mapping Ethnicity onto Nationalist Insurgencies," American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (2007), pp. 173-85.
36. Roeder, "Ethnolinguistic Fractionalisation Indices."
37. 2, where z = the number of groups and p = the proportional size of each. This may easily be converted into an index of diversity (D = 1 - C), and it may equally easily be converted into an "index of the effective number of ethnic groups" (E = 1/C). On the analogous measure of party fractionalization, see Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, "'Effective Number of Parties': A Measure with Application to West Europe," Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1979), pp. 3-27.
38. Rudolph, Encyclopedia.
39. Levinson, Ethnic Relations, pp. 62-70.
40. Levinson, Ethnic Relations, pp. 62-70.
41. Christian P. Scherrer, "Towards a Comprehensive Analysis of Ethnicity and Mass Violence: Types, Dynamics, Characteristics and Trends," in H°akon Wiberg and Christian P. Scherrer (eds.), Ethnicity and Intra-State Conflict (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 52-88.
42. The PRIO database is produced jointly with the Uppsala Conflict Data Program; see www.prio.no/CSCW/. Updates are published annually in the Journal of Peace Research. As well as its "Cosimo" database on conflict, the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research publishes an annual Conflict Barometer; see www.hiik.de [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].
43. Jean-Marc Balencie and Arnaud de La Grange (eds.), Les Nouveaux Mondes rebelles, 4th ed. (Paris: Editions Michalon, 2005).
44. Some of the other more quantitative overviews discussed in this article are accompanied by detailed qualitative information, and this is exceptionally extensive in the case of the Minorities at Risk and Ethnologue projects; see www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/data.asp#qualitative and www.ethnologue.com/web.asp [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].
45. The MAR dataset, with 315 cases in its 2005 edition, is in general more inclusive than other efforts to explore the range of minorities that may be detected worldwide, such as the Minority Rights Group, World Directory of Minorities (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1990), which lists 170. The new MAR dataset release of 2009 covers 284 cases; see www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].
46. For an elaboration of the first five of these categories, see Ted Robert Gurr, with Barbara Harff, Monty G. Marshall, and James R. Scarritt, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1993), pp. 15-23; the sixth was added in the 2005 edition of the dataset.
47. Derived from the 2009 edition of the MAR dataset.
48. These points are developed further in John Coakley, "Introduction: The Challenge," in John Coakley (ed.), The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict, 2nd ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 1-22.
49. Similarities in the positions of the nationalist movements mentioned are described in John Coakley, "Independence Movements and National Minorities: Some Parallels in the European Experience," European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1980), pp. 215-47.
50. and John Coakley, "National Minorities and the Government of Divided Societies: A Comparative Analysis of some European Evidence," European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1990), pp. 437-56.
51. However, the European Social Survey, rounds 1-4, 2002-08, contained 340 respondents in the Brussels region speaking either French or Dutch; of these, 90% were French speakers and 10% Dutch speakers, and these proportions were used here (computed from European Social Survey; data available ess.nsd.uib.no [accessed 30 Oct. 2009]). These data should be treated with caution due to the complexity of the Brussels region.
52. The 2007 data, reported by the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, were prepared by Information International, Beirut (see www.information-international.com). It should be noted that many Christians oppose the taking of a census confined to Lebanon itself, arguing that the diaspora (where they are relatively better represented) should be included.
53. Computed from Demographic Report 2006 (Lefkosia: Statistical Service, 2007), www.pio.gov.cy/mof/cystat/statistics.nsf; TNRC census 2006, nufussayimi.devplan.org. [accessed 30 Oct. 2009]
54. Sri Lanka, Statistical Abstract 2008, www.statistics.gov.lk [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].
55. Computed from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Statistical Yearbook 2008 (Sarajevo: Federal Office of Statistics, 2008), p. 66.
56. Republic of Cyprus, Demographic Report 2006 (Lefkosia: Statistical Service, 2007), p. 32.
57. available www.pio.gov.cy/mof/cystat/statistics.nsf/ [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].
58. Computed from Statistics South Africa, Census 2001; www.statssa.gov.za [accessed 30 Oct. 2009].