WHY DO ETHNIC GROUPS REBEL?
New Data and Analysis
By LARS-ERIK CEDERMAN, ANDREAS WIMMER, and BRIAN MIN*
D
ESPITE its fundamental role in legitimizing the modern state
system, nationalism has rarely been linked to the outbreak of po-
litical violence in the recent literature on ethnic conflict and civil war.
To a large extent, this is because the state is absent from many conven-
tional theories of ethnic conflict. Indeed, some studies analyze conflict
between ethnic groups under conditions of state failure, thus making
the absence of the state the very core of the causal argument. Others
assume that the state is ethnically neutral and try to relate ethnodemo-
graphic measures, such as fractionalization and polarization, to civil
war. In contrast to these approaches, we analyze the state as an institu-
tion that is captured to different degrees by representatives of particular
ethnic communities, and thus we conceive of ethnic wars as the result
of competing ethnonationalist claims to state power.
While our work relates to a rich research tradition that links the
causes of such conflicts to the mobilization of ethnic minorities, it also
goes beyond this tradition by introducing a new data set that addresses
some of the shortcomings of this tradition. Our analysis is based on
the Ethnic Power Relations data set (
e p r ), which covers all politically
relevant ethnic groups and their access to power around the world from
1946 through 2005. This data set improves significantly on the widely
used Minorities at Risk data set, which restricts its sample to mobilized
*Correspondence should be directed to Lars-Erik Cederman (lcederman@ethz.ch). We would
like to thank the many individuals who helped assemble the data set on which this article relies. We
cannot list all country experts who generously shared their knowledge, but we should like to mention
Dennis Avilés, Yuval Feinstein, Dmitry Gorenburg, Wesley Hiers, Lutz Krebs, Patrick Kuhn, Anoop
Sarbahi, James Scarritt, Manuel Vogt, Judith Vorrath, Jürg Weder, and Christoph Zürcher. Luc Girar-
din implemented the software for the online expert survey. The authors acknowledge financial support
from the Swiss National Science Foundation through Grant No. 105511-116795, and from UCLA’s
International Institute. We are grateful for helpful comments by the editors and anonymous referees
of this journal, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Simon Hug, and Idean Salehyan, as well as audiences at
e t h Zürich, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Hebrew University in Jerusa-
lem, University of St. Gallen, and Princeton University.
World Politics 62, no. 1 (January 2010), 87–119
Copyright © 2010 Trustees of Princeton University
doi: 10.1017/S0043887109990219
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88 w o r l d p o l i t i c s
1
Complementing the current study, Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009 show that ethic conflict
results from specific ethnopolitical configurations of power, rather than from ethnic diversity per se.
They identify three particularly conflict-prone configurations: ethnocracies, states with a high number
of power-sharing ethnic elites, and incohesive states with a short history of direct rule by the center.
2
Posen 1993.
3
Hardin 1995; de Figueiredo and Weingast 1999.
minorities and thus largely overlooks the ethnopolitical constellation
of power at the center.
Improved theory and data allow us to show that, contrary to the
expectations held by many scholars of civil wars, competing ethno-
nationalist claims over the state constitute the driving force behind
many internal conflicts in the post–World War II era. While we have
analyzed this data set at the country level in another publication,
1
we
pursue a more disaggregated, group-level analysis here. We show that
conflict with the government is more likely to erupt (1) the more repre-
sentatives of an ethnic group are excluded from state power, especially
if they experienced a loss of power in the recent past, (2) the higher
their mobilizational capacity is, and (3) the more they have experi-
enced conflict in the past. In view of these findings, we conclude that
ethnonationalist struggles over access to state power are an important
part of the dynamics leading to the outbreak of civil wars.
The article is organized as follows. We first review the relevant con-
flict literature and then develop the three main hypotheses that lie at
the core of our theory. The following section introduces the
e p r data
set. The main results are presented in the next section, followed by a
brief sensitivity analysis and a concluding section.
e
x i s t i n g Ap p r o A c h e s t o et h n i c i t y A n d co n f l i c t :
s
e c u r i t y di l e m m A , et h n i c fr A c t i o n A l i z A t i o n , A n d
m
i n o r i t y mo b i l i z A t i o n
In order to understand the conflicts that broke out in Yugoslav and
Soviet successor states as well as in Rwanda during the 1990s, some
researchers have utilized ideas developed to study interstate relations
during the cold war. Most prominently, Posen conceived of ethnic con-
flict as a struggle between ethnic groups in the wake of state collapse.
2
According to neorealist theory, ethnic groups face a security dilemma
when the Leviathan disappears and react with preemptive violence.
These ideas were subsequently elaborated with the help of rational
choice models.
3
As a consequence of the assumption of state breakdown, however,
this research tends to overlook the important role played by state actors
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w h y d o e t h n i c g r o u p s r e b e l ? 89
4
Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Fearon and Laitin 2003; for a review, see Kalyvas 2007.
5
Fearon and Laitin 2003. Using different model specifications, other quantitative studies report a
positive impact of ethnic fractionalization on civil war onset; see Sambanis 2001; Hegre and Sambanis
2006; Blimes 2006.
6
For example, Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005; cf. Horowitz 1985.
7
For example, Collier and Hoeffler 2004.
8
A number of scholars have called for a more disaggregated approach that focuses on microlevel
mechanisms, for example, Kalyvas 2006; for a review, see Tarrow 2007. Our own approach comple-
ments these studies at a level of analysis that is less detailed yet offers global coverage.
9
Posner 2004.
10
Chandra and Wilkinson 2008.
11
Cederman and Girardin 2007.
12
Brass 1991; Breuilly 1994; Wimmer 2002.
in generating these conflicts in the first place, as the wars in Yugoslavia,
Rwanda, and many other places clearly demonstrate. In the absence of
state agency, political violence may take the form of communal conflict
over land or local political dominance but not of full-fledged civil war.
In recent statistical research on civil wars, many scholars argue that
ethnic grievances are too widespread to explain the rare onset of con-
flict. Wars are more likely, so the argument goes, in states that are too
weak to suppress rebellions or where natural resources invite warlords
to enrich themselves by looting.
4
Research on the basis of this griev-
ance hypothesis has undoubtedly helped to clarify the general condi-
tions that are conducive to civil wars and insurgencies. However, the
grievance hypothesis has not been tested with adequate data; rather,
it has been tested with highly aggregated proxies that do not provide
a direct measure of political inequality along ethnic lines and the re-
sulting “grievances.” Fearon and Laitin, for example, examine whether
there is a statistical association between measures of a country’s “ethnic
fractionalization” and civil war onset.
5
Some scholars have worked with
measures of ethnic polarization that are loosely related to Horowitz’s
theory of ethnic conflict, again without explicit references to the state.
6
Others seek to operationalize the concept of ethnic domination but use
a demographic proxy as well.
7
We believe that efforts to grasp the propensity for ethnonationalist
conflict with the help of macrolevel indices are problematic.
8
First, they
implicitly assume that the ethnic groups listed in the work of anthro-
pologists and linguists are politically relevant.
9
Second, the macrolevel
indices describe a country’s demography,
10
which may or may not be
related to the actual constellation of power at the state center.
11
Quali-
tative studies of ethnic conflict show that in such cases the state is not
an ethnically neutral institution but is an active agent of political exclu-
sion that generates these conflicts in the first place.
12
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90 w o r l d p o l i t i c s
A third stream of research starts from this insight and studies the
conditions under which minorities will mobilize against the state and
also the conditions under which such mobilization will turn violent.
13
Building on work in the relative deprivation tradition, the Minorities
at Risk (
m A r ) data set established by Gurr and his colleagues remains
the most prominent data source used to evaluate ethnic mobilizations
and violence at the group level.
14
Scholars in this tradition have studied
the consequences economic, political, and cultural discrimination (see
below), the settlement patterns that enhance minority mobilization for
conflict,
15
domestic diversion mechanisms,
16
the dynamics of seces-
sionist bargaining,
17
and third-party intervention,
18
as well as the role
of country-level factors, such as government responses to autonomy
claims by ethnic minorities
19
and broader international contextual fac-
tors facilitating ethnic mobilization.
20
While the m A r data set allows for empirical testing of mechanisms
linking group characteristics to conflict propensity, it has its limita-
tions. We note that the
m A r -based literature has produced somewhat
conflicting results regarding the question most relevant to this article:
whether or not political disadvantage and discrimination increase the
likelihood of ethnic rebellion. In fact, whereas some studies find that
political disadvantage has an impact on the likelihood of armed rebel-
lion and secession,
21
others find that the degree of political exclusion
has no effect on secessionism.
22
The picture is even more mixed as re-
gards the effect of political discrimination: while Regan and Norton,
as well as Walter, find strong evidence that political discrimination in-
creases rebellions and secessionist civil wars,
23
Fox fails to find any clear
relationship for the subset of ethnoreligious groups,
24
and Gurr’s study
of ethnonationalist rebellions in the 1980s even suggests that political
discrimination is associated with less rather than more conflict.
25
Olzak
aggregates
m A r data on the country level and arrives at the conclusion
13
There is also a vast qualitative literature on minority mobilization and ethnonationalist violence;
see Brubaker and Laitin 1998.
14
Gurr 1993a; Gurr 2002.
15
Toft 2003.
16
Tir and Jasinski 2008.
17
Walter 2006a; Jenne 2007.
18
Cetinyan 2002; Saideman 2002.
19
Brancati 2006; Walter 2006b.
20
Olzak 2006.
21
For example, Gurr 1993b; Walter 2006b.
22
Saideman and Ayers 2000.
23
Regan and Norton 2005; Walter 2006b.
24
Fox 2000.
25
Gurr 1993b.
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w h y d o e t h n i c g r o u p s r e b e l ? 91
that both formal recognition of ethnic group rights and political dis-
crimination increase the likelihood of conflict.
26
Clearly, some of these discrepancies can be attributed to differ-
ent research designs and sample definitions, but we suspect that the
data set’s inherent problems might be responsible for these conflicting
findings as well. The
m A r data set “hardwires” the degree of power
access into the sample definition by excluding groups in power from
systematic consideration. This reduces the comparative horizon and
thus makes it harder to capture the effects of political exclusions in un-
ambiguous ways. Moreover, in many countries with dramatic shifts in
power constellations (Chad, Afghanistan, Liberia), the political status
of an ethnic group may change from discriminated minority to ruling
elite from one period to the next. Indeed, studies of ethnonational-
ism should treat ethnic groups’ representation within government as a
variable rather than as a constant. Finally, focusing on minorities con-
flates the demographic concept of numerical domination with political
exclusion. Accordingly, the
m A r coding scheme does not fit countries
with ruling minorities or complex coalitions of ethnically defined elites,
as for example in Nigeria, India, or Chad, where ethnic conflict will be
pursued in the name of excluded majorities (rather than minorities) or
ethnic groups that share power (and are thus not “at risk”).
27
In sum, much of the recent literature on ethnic conflict and civil
wars fails to get the state’s role right. Many approaches do not take ac-
count of the state as an actor in conflict processes (as in the security di-
lemma approach), fail to trace the ethnopolitical power constellations
at the center of state power (as in the minority mobilization school), or
try to capture ethnopolitical discontent through demographic proxies
of diversity. These theoretical, sampling, and measurement problems
hinder the development of precise and testable hypothesis about which
mechanisms connect ethnonationalist politics to political violence. The
following section addresses this task.
t
h e o r i z i n g et h n o n A t i o n A l i s t co n f l i c t : Ac t o r
c
o n s t e l l A t i o n s , mo t i v e s , A n d co l l e c t i v e Ac t i o n
The classical sociological literature on nationalism offers a good start-
ing point for understanding the logic of ethnonationalist conflict.
26
Olzak 2006,124.
27
The m A r data set tries to address these limitations by including five “advantaged” minorities
that benefit from political discrimination. m A r also comprises a series of “communal contenders”
mostly in Africa, that is, groups that share power with others while at the same time mobilizing in
protest or rebellion.
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