Institutionalized Ethnicity and Civil War
Evan S. Lieberman, Princeton University [esl@princeton.edu]
Prerna Singh, Princeton University [prernas@princeton.edu]**
Abstract:
While scholars have made substantial progress towards understanding the relationship between
ethnicity and civil war, important theoretical and empirical gaps remain. Existing explanations are
either too distal, and ignore the constructivist origins of ethnic group formation; or too proximate,
such that the link between ethnic conflict and ethnic violence may be difficult to pick apart. We
develop an explanation of ethnic civil war rooted in the micro-foundations of social identity theory
(SIT). When states use ethnic categories, even for seemingly “neutral” purposes such as counting,
these distinctions establish the bases for potential group conflicts. We hypothesize that the
institutionalization of group boundaries offers a political basis for the mobilization of recruits on the
basis of emotion-laden social comparisons. In qualitative and quantitative comparative-historical
analyses of 13 countries, we find that all cases of ethnic civil war occur only when states make ethnic
distinctions, and that the depth of institutionalization of categories, strongly increases the likelihood
of ethnic civil war.
*We gratefully acknowledge research assistance from Dan Scher, financial support from the Bobst
Center, comments from participants in the Laboratory in Comparative Ethnic Politics (LiCEP) May
2006 meeting, the Comparative Politics workshop and Identity Politics Working Group at Princeton
University, the Oxford University seminar on democracy and inequality, Ashutosh Varshney, Tulia
Faletti, Daniel Ziblatt, Giovanni Cappoccia, and Julia Lynch.
**Author names are listed alphabetically; both authors contributed equally to this work.
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1
Introduction
In a review of several leading books on ethnicity and violence, Fearon and Laitin (2000: 847) highlight
their surprise that, “no literature articulating theoretical or empirical connections between the social construction
of ethnicity and violence yet exists. No positive theory links processes of social construction as independent
variables to the occurrence of ethnic violence as a dependent variable.” A decade later, even following the
publication of a substantial volume of scholarly work investigating the relationship between ethnicity and civil
war – including contributions by Fearon and Laitin themselves – this gap persists. In this paper, we attempt to
address this lacuna, building upon Tajfel and Turner’s “social identity” and “minimal group conflict” theories
(1986). Specifically, we elaborate a theory of the link between the state’s institutionalization of ethnic categories
and the outbreak of ethnic violence. We hypothesize that the state’s institutionalization of ethnic categories
facilitates group identification and mobilization, the development of discriminatory practices, social competition,
and increases the likelihood of hostility and violence. We explore the implications of this theory in a series of
statistical and comparative analyses across a range of potential cleavage categories for 13 countries during the
second half of the 20th century. We find that the increased institutionalization of ethnic categories increases the
probability of ethnic civil war.1
The question of whether the ethnic quality of politics increases the likelihood of civil war has animated
scholars of comparative politics and international relations for more than a decade. The conventional wisdom
that higher levels of ethnic diversity breed conflict, which found empirical support in a quantitative analysis of
ethnic civil wars (Sambanis 2001), has been challenged by a number of influential studies (Collier and Hoeffler
2002, Fearon and Laitin 2003). Fearon and Laitin, for example, conclude that, “it appears not to be true that a
greater degree of ethnic or religious diversity—or indeed any particular cultural demography—by itself makes a
country more prone to civil war” (2003: 75). Further replications have confirmed that levels of ethnic diversity
have little consistent predictive power, and in any case, the logical
1
Sambanis (2001); Fearon and Laitin (2003); and Wimmer, Cederman and Min (2009) all make distinctions
between ethnic and nonethnic civil wars. Because our theory is concerned exclusively with ethnic boundaries, we
analyze only ethnic civil wars – those wars among ethnic communities that are “in conflict over the power
relationship that exists between those communities and the state,” (Sambanis 2001: 261).
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basis for such predictions was weak: we see no reason why, beyond a fairly minimal level of ethnic diversity,
any ethnic demography ought to make violent conflict more or less likely. A few groups? Many groups?
Evenly or unevenly balanced in size?
Recently, scholars have introduced more proximate conceptualizations of ethnic politics, highlighting
imbalances in ethnic power relations as the basis for violent conflict. For example, Cederman and Girardin
(2007) develop an index called N*, which measures the extent to which “marginalized ethnic groups” are
excluded from state power in states by comparing their demographic share to that held by the “ethnic group
in power.” In replications of the Fearon and Laitin (2003) analyses, they find a positive relationship between
their measure of ethnic exclusion of power and the onset of civil war. In a subsequent and related project,
Wimmer, Cederman and Min (2009) find that variations in “Ethnic Power Relations” (EPR) are also
associated with violent outcomes, including ethnic civil wars. These findings highlight that ethnic politics are a
potentially important fault-line for the struggle over state power and often generate civil war violence.
However, given the striking consensus around the constructivist origins of ethnic identities (Fearon
and Laitin 2000: 847), it is puzzling that most efforts at explaining civil war continue to take ethnic groups
largely as givens, particularly when a rich case study literature (e.g. Laitin 1986; Marx 1998; Posner 2005) has
provided strong clues about the state’s role in the creation of categories and conflicts. As in these other
studies, an open question remains concerning the origins of such institutions. Nonetheless, our approach is
clearly analytically prior to currently dominant approaches in the scholarly literature. For example, Cederman
and Girardin (2007) view ethnic imbalances in power as exogenous and see them as a potential cause of
ethnic civil war, and Wimmer, Cederman and Min (2009) use expert coders to identify politically salient ethnic
groups. This is not tautological, but it is important to point out that their approach begins with a view of
ethnic groups in which their salience has already been recognized to the extent that each group’s
representatives are observable in the seats of government. Such mobilization is quite far down any causal
chain towards violent conflict, and leaves unanswered several questions including why we ought to assess
power imbalances in terms of one ethnic cleavage and not another. Moreover, it would be difficult for any
expert coder to avoid being influenced by knowledge of violence claimed as ethnic in the identification of
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3
politically relevant groups. Our approach theorizes about ethnicity in such a way that allows for more
tractable, objective, and ex ante measurement, locating ethnic politics in a sufficiently distal position that there
would be more uncertainty concerning the potential for subsequent violent conflict.
Specifically, we hypothesize that the state’s institutionalization of ethnic group boundaries provides a
powerful basis for political mobilization and insurgency against the claims to authority and a monopoly on
violence by the national state, in turn increasing the potential for civil war. In the next section, we describe
our theory of the institutional foundations of civil war. Second, we describe our data and identify patterns
consistent with our theory. Third, we present a series of structured-comparative analyses that allow us to
examine the relationship between institutionalized ethnicity and ethnic civil wars, controlling for other factors
that have been found to predict the onset of such wars in large-sample quantitative analyses. Our narratives
highlight how and why institutionalized ethnicity influences patterns of conflict. Our “medium-N” set of
narrative analyses provides much needed process-tracing evidence linking institutionalized ethnicity to
patterns of conflict that eventually become violent, and challenge the state’s authority. We conclude with
some proposals for future research.
A Theory of Institutionalized Ethnicity, Social Identities, and Civil War
Are ethnic categories merely flimsy labels developed in a superficial manner to advance the pursuit of
largely material goals, as instrumentalist scholars would have us believe (Bates 1974; Collier and Hoeffler
2002)? Or does ethnic competition endogenously generate its own set of emotions and utilities through a
dynamic of social competition (Petersen 2002)? If the former were true, we should not be able to reject the null
hypothesis that ex ante observations of a relevant ethnic variable are unrelated to the outbreak of ethnic civil
war. We predict the latter. To be clear, we are not arguing that ethnic civil war should be traced to
“longstanding grievances,” and we agree with Collier and Hoeffler’s (2002) dismissal of such an explanation for
civil war. Rather, we claim that institutions play a role in the construction of group conflicts, which themselves
induce a search for narratives of grievance, both real and imagined.
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In this regard, we build upon the micro-level theoretical foundations and consistent empirical results
associated with Social Identity Theory (SIT), and we attempt to develop a macro-level theory that links
institutionalized ethnicity to a higher probability of ethnic civil war. A key finding from SIT is that when
people recognize themselves as members of groups, and when such groups are readily compared to other,
proximate groups, they will strive to pursue a favorable group reputation or status. They do this not merely
for the pursuit of material gains, but because they value the feeling of being part of a well respected group,
and resist the notion of inferior status. As found in laboratory settings (Brown 2000: 748), ingroup bias
occurs even in the absence of “objective” or material incentives. Various experiments reveal that group
membership, and not just relative deprivation, tends to motivate group mobilization (Brown 2000: 750),
though the interaction of the two can be particularly powerful. Within the context of intergroup belief
systems, individuals may find it difficult to conceive of the possibility of joining the opposing group,
especially because of fear of sanctions (Tajfel and Turner 1986: 9). Presciently, they predict that inter-group
competition is likely to appear in the form of “unified group actions – that is in the form of social movements
aiming either to create social change or to preserve the status quo” (Tajfel and Turner 1986: 11). In the
framework of social psychology, Tajfel and Turner contrast their theory with “Realistic Group Conflict
Theory,” which is akin to rational choice theory, in the sense that ethnocentrism and antagonism between
groups are rooted in “opposing claims to scarce resources, such as power, prestige or wealth.” Social identity
theory posits that incompatible group interests are neither sufficient nor necessary for the development of
competition and discrimination between groups (Tajfel and Turner 1986: 12-13). Once groups are created
and perceived, humans attempt to develop and/or to maintain a positive sense of social identity, and they are
more likely to mobilize if they perceive a threat to the group’s dignity. If true, and if it is possible to apply this
theory more broadly, this is a powerful insight, because it points out that it is the mere act of differentiation,
not exclusion or imbalance, which is the basis for conflict.
We apply these basic insights of SIT to a broad theory of the effects of state institutions on civil war
onset and fighting. Ethnic groups may be formed and differentiated in a variety of ways. Yet, state institutions
– specifically, rules and laws associated with the conduct of the census, identity documents, voting, access to
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jobs or education, the provision of autonomy, and the regulation of public space -- are potentially quite
powerful when they employ ethnic categories. Such institutions are projected with the resources of the state,
they provide legal status to such labels, and they stand in tension with the larger collective identity which
modern national states claim to represent (see Table 1, and for further explication, see Lieberman and Singh
2009).
In a more abstract sense, our theory should not be limited only to ethnic groups, particularly as SIT
makes no such claims. Chandra (2006) raises the challenge of defining ethnicity in such a way that clearly
distinguishes it from other social groups, and in turn, we provide some responses. States may make
distinctions along gender and age lines, but we have yet to see a gendered or generational civil war, almost
surely because other institutions, such as families, mitigate the possibility of forming coherent groups. While
inequality of income and wealth are important bases for conflict, and arguably do wind up being violent on
occasion, in fact, states have been far less likely to create rigid boundaries along these lines. We define as
ethnic those cultural categories rooted in a sense of common ancestry. We believe that these can be
particularly powerful because they make claims to distinctive group origins, which helps to perpetuate
dynamics associated with SIT. We note that we define ethnicity as a sub-national cultural category – i.e.,
Haitians are an ethnic group in the Dominican Republic, but not in Haiti.
What is the link between institutions and ethnic violence? First, institutions may create incentives for,
or constraints upon ethnic identification and mobilization that were not previously available. This claim has
deep intellectual roots: Others have observed that institutions may make particular sets of identities or social
cleavages hegemonic in a manner specified by Gramsci (Laitin 1986). Our focus on institutions is driven by a
strong theoretical assertion that ethnic identification, mobilization and conflict originate with the development
of ethnic boundaries, that is, the degree to which sets of rules make distinctions between “us,” and “them.”
Institutionalization can create a powerful dynamic in which categorization breeds ideas about organizing
rebellion. When potential rebels observe the state’s use of categories, these become ready-made bases for
expressing grievances about inequality and injustice, and facilitate the process of recruitment. Given
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the findings of SIT, those recruited to fight may be more likely to make corporeal sacrifices owing to a
perceived sense of injustice and discrimination.
Theoretical contributions in a range of social science disciplines, including sociology, political science,
cognitive and social psychology have all emphasized the role of such boundary mechanisms (Barth 1969,
Lamont and Bolnár 2002, Tilly 2005, Tajfel and Turner 1986), and we also follow in this path. To be sure,
both formal and informal institutions are important for the formation and maintenance of ethnic group
relations. As Hechter (2000: 23) argues, “boundaries between groups initially flow from institutions of control
rather than from already pre-established social identities. Hence, identities are derived from boundaries rather
than vice versa.” Thus, the mere institutionalization of ethnic categories is likely to be a minimal threshold condition for
ethnic civil war.
Our second theoretical claim is that when states institutionalize ethnic categories to increasing
degrees, those institutions help to create and/or to reinforce a sense of “us-them,” and subjective evaluations
of distributive justice and legitimate authority are more likely to be made with respect to those categories.
Again, drawing on the micro-level findings associated with SIT, we predict that mobilizational possibilities
increase as the potential for group permeability decrease (Brown 750; also, Lieberman 2009). To the extent
that the state uses the same set of group labels, it will be increasingly difficult for any individual to imagine the
prospects of assimilation. Under such circumstances, we predict a higher probability for group-level conflicts
over status, which themselves are likely to map onto real and perceived imbalances in resources and/or
power. With specific regard to the concern of violence, these explicit forms of social differentiation provide
information for the recruitment of co-ethnics to perpetrate violence, the identification of potential victims,
ready-made heuristics for information brokers to report on “unfair” distributions of resources and/or unfair
policies and practices that lead to such distribution.
While we recognize that a host of structural and proximate factors are likely to breed insurgency, we
take seriously the autonomous effect of socially meaningful group boundaries, which facilitate organization
through claims to fundamental moral conflicts, and inspire emotional passions generated from competition
over status. Even if actors simply pursue material gains, the coordination effects associated with prior state
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labeling will facilitate the type of mobilization necessary to sustain violent conflict at a level that could be
classified as civil war. In particular, because the state creates the categories of conflict, it is likely to be viewed as a
party to the perceived injustices and hostilities, such that it becomes a target of hostility in its own right. The
more deeply institutionalized are the group boundaries, the harder it should be to resolve the conflict, leading to
longer durations for hostilities.
Data and Analysis
We employ a battery of quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore our hypotheses about the
implications of SIT for civil war. The currently dominant approach to the quantitative analysis of civil war
outbreaks and ongoing violence is to estimate logistic models with datasets containing information about all
countries on a yearly basis for several decades. Though we initially set out on this path, it turns out that gathering
reliable observations concerning the presence or absence of institutions is an extraordinarily labor-intensive
process and it was not possible to generate such a dataset. As an alternative, we focus on 13 low-and middleincome countries from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia for the post-independence period of
the 20th century, as identified in Table 2.2 That said, as King and Zheng (2001) point out, the use of logistic
regression in rare events data – often in studies of international relations – often compromises data quality and
can be grossly inefficient. We believe this is also at least partially descriptive of the quantitative civil war
literature, and thus despite the ubiquity of approach, we do not believe it ought to be held out as the “gold
standard” for gaining new empirical insights. As compared with these other quantitative studies, we believe our
approach identifies an ethnic variable that can be measured with a higher degree of reliability and validity, and
that is more nuanced in its approach to multiple ethnic cleavages.
We make no claims to the representativeness of this sample for the larger universe of all countries,
but it is important to note that our selection of cases was not generated through a process that ought to be
correlated with the values on the dependent variable. Rather, we first selected three countries based on our
2
Originally, we had included Canada, the United Kingdom, and France in our analyses. However, when we discovered
that the codings of civil wars included wars for independence, we concluded that our framework would not readily
apply to such circumstances. Moreover, there is substantial empirical evidence that civil war is less likely at higher
levels of per capita income, so we exclude those cases from our analyses.
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own familiarity with those cases,3 and then we expanded the sample to a size we agreed would be sufficiently
large to identify a wide range of variation in institutionalized ethnicity based on geographic diversity a range of
values on a measure of Ethnic Linguistic Fractionalization (Roeder 2001), and countries at varied levels of per
capita income.
Indeed, a central challenge for students of ethnic politics has been to determine which groups or
identities should be considered relevant or salient (Chandra 2006; Chandra and Wilkinson 2008). Why, for
example, should one identify “African-Americans” and not “Scandinavian-Americans” as an ethnic group?
Our approach is not plagued by such problems because we simultaneously investigate the multiple cleavages
that might be recognized by the state, and we are not forced to make arbitrary decisions about relative
salience or potential overlap. In fact, we use these differences to make more precise empirical predictions. For
each country, we have allowed for the possibility of 6 different sets of ethnic categories or cleavages
(language, religion, caste, indigenous, race, ethnic/other).4 We construct an “institutionalized ethnicity index
(IEI)” for each of the six cleavages, which is the summation of the presence (1) or absence (0) of the 9
institutions for each cleavage.
Our unit of analysis is “country-decade-cleavage.” If an institution existed at any time during the
decade, we count the institution as being present during that decade. We only include those observations for
which we have information that at least two groups exist for any cleavage and that the second largest group is
at least one percent of the population. For each category, we employed standardized sourcebooks to identify
any evidence that the second-largest group constituted at least 1 percent of the population at any moment in
time, and if not, we ignored that category for the purposes of our analysis. In other words, if more than 99
percent of a country belonged to a particular religious faith, we did not investigate and do not report data on
institutionalized ethnicity in terms of religion because it is not a potential boundary between substantially
large groups of citizens. Similarly, for countries which do not have any “caste” categories, or for which the
8
In particular, Brazil, India, and South Africa.
See Lieberman and Singh 2009 for elaboration of data collection.
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9
“indigenous” population is between 0 and 1 percent, we do not include those cleavages in our analysis. In
total, we consider 186 country-cleavage-decades.5
If our theory is correct, evidence of the presence of such institutions should provide predictive power
concerning both the countries in which ethnic civil wars break out, and the specific cleavages along which such
wars occur. As an indicator of our outcome, we use the Fearon and Laitin (2003) data, which identifies 75
outbreaks or onsets of ethnic civil war, representing two-thirds of the 111 civil wars identified in their dataset for
the period 1945-99. Within our sample of 13 country cases, Fearon and Laitin identify 12 cases of ethnic civil
war, and we present their codings for the country, the onset and conclusion years of the war, as well as their
verbatim “case names” in Table 3. Of these, we were able to unambiguously code 9 of the 12 ethnic civil wars as
identifiable with a single cleavage.6 The Biafran war in Nigeria and the civil war in Sri Lanka both occurred
around the mutually reinforcing cleavages of language and religion – Northern Hausa Muslims vs. Southeastern
Igbo Christians; and Tamil Hindus vs. Sinhala Buddhists. In the case of the 1990s civil war in Pakistan, identified
by Fearon and Laitin as “MQM: Sindhis vs. Mohajirs,” they point out that this case is only ambiguously coded as
an ethnic civil war, and we classify it as cutting across a linguistic cleavage as the conflict was largely between the
muhajirs (Urdu-speaking immigrants from India) and non-mohajirs (Sindhi speaking natives of Sindh).
To assess the relationship between the institutionalization of ethnic categories and ethnic civil war
outcomes, in table 4, we report the proportions of cases of country-cleavage-decades in which ethnic civil wars
broke out, first, in those cases where the associated ethnic categories were identified by the relevant state
institution, and second, in those cases where the categories were not institutionalized. We replicate this analysis
in table 5, but use as our dependent variable the fighting of ethnic civil war, which includes both the decades of
outbreaks and those of sustained hostilities. For all nine institutions, there is a higher proportion of
5
Our analyses are for the period 1945-99, for which we have data on ethnic civil wars. We only include country
decades during which countries were independent. In figure 1, we also depict IEI scores for decades preceding and
following this period merely to demonstrate trends in IEI.
6
Kashmiri is a distinct and common language spoken by the residents of the valley of Kashmir; there might
therefore, be some temptation to see this as a linguistic civil war. However, in so far as the insurgents have
mobilized around an Islamic, rather than pan-religious, linguistic identity, it is most accurately seen as a religious
civil war.
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10
ethnic civil war outbreaks and fighting when ethnic categories are institutionalized. Based on the analyses of twogroup proportion tests, we find that the mean differences are statistically different from zero in 6 of 9
institutions for civil war outbreaks and 7 of 9 institutions for ongoing fighting.
In table 6, we compare the sample means of the aggregate IEI score for those cases of civil war with all
other cases, and we find that the mean IEI is substantially higher in the cases of civil war. On average, the IEI is
3.92 (out of a possible 9) for country-cleavage-decades with ethnic civil war onsets, but only 1.81 for all other
cases. It is worth noting that every outbreak of ethnic civil war occurred with an IEI score of 2 or greater.
Finally, in table 7, we present a limited replication of the types of logistic analyses that are standard in
much of the quantitative literature on civil wars (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009),
and we estimate models of ethnic civil war onset (columns 1 and 2) and ethnic civil war fighting (columns 3 and
4). Because we use a different type of unit – country-cleavage-decade as compared with country-year, and
because we use a far more limited sample of countries, we do not expect our baseline results to reproduce the
findings of prior studies. Moreover, it is important to point out that our smaller sample pushes against the lower
bound of “about 200” for generating unbiased estimates (King and Zeng 2001: 138), but we report these
findings because they address obvious questions of analytic control and comparability with extant research.
Columns 1 and 3 present estimates of the effects of being an oil exporter, the log of percent mountainous
territory, ethnic fractionalization, and logged per capita income. In columns 2 and 4, we incorporate our IEI
variable into the models, and as predicted, we find positive and statistically significant relationships.
Comparative Historical Analyses
In this section, we turn to a set of more tightly controlled comparisons and more detailed causal process
tracing, which we present in narrative form (Brady, Collier, and Seawright 2006; George and Bennett 2005;
Mahoney 1999). Where we find a concurrence between a high level of institutionalized ethnicity and the outbreak
of ethnic civil war, we consulted well-known secondary sources to identify additional evidence that
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might help shed light on the theoretical claims identified above. Where institutionalized ethnicity is low, we
consider the extent to which such outcomes can be understood as deliberate political choices, or merely as
endogenous to other factors or processes.
Low-Income Countries
In virtually all of the extant quantitative studies of civil war, per capita income and state infrastructure
are significant negative predictors of civil wars. Within this sub-group, all of the countries with high levels of
institutionalized ethnicity (Rwanda, Nigeria, India, and Pakistan) experienced at least one ethnic civil war; and
none of the countries with low levels of ethnic institutionalization (Lesotho, Burkina Faso) had any.
Rwanda and Lesotho: The cases of Rwanda and Lesotho form the basis for a nicely paired
comparison in so far as they allow one to control for some of the factors found to be significant predictors of
civil war by Fearon and Laitin (2003) - both are small, highly mountainous countries, with similar levels of per
capita income. According to the ELF statistic used in the Fearon and Laitin study, they have similar (low) levels
of ethnic diversity. Such cases help drive the statistical finding of no effect for ethnic demography because
Lesotho has experienced no civil wars, and Rwanda has had two. We are clearly not the first to observe the link
between the state’s codification of ethnic categories and widespread violence in Rwanda (Dallaire 2005,
Gourevitch 1998, Longman 2001, Mamdani 2001) but it is useful to place this case in comparative perspective,
as the link between institutions and violence can be identified to varied degrees in other countries.
According to Longman (2001:346), “Students of Rwandan history commonly trace the roots of the 1994
genocide to official colonial policies that fixed group identities, arranged groups in a hierarchy, and instilled in
the Rwandan groups, a hatred and distrust of one another.” The decision by Rwanda’s first president Gregoire
Kayibanda to continue the institution of racial identity documents begun by the Belgian colonists reinforced the
Hutu-Tutsi divide. Post-colonial policies of racially-based quotas in education and employment further
exacerbated ethnic tensions. Such high levels of institutionalized ethnic boundaries are associated with two ethnic
civil wars along this cleavage: the first being “post-revolutionary strife,” which
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commenced in 1962, and more prominently, in 1994, Rwanda attained international ignominy when within a
100-day period, over 500,000 Tutsis and their moderate Hutu sympathizers were slaughtered. This horrific
outbreak of violence between two communities that share a common language, cultural traditions and religious
affiliation and frequently inter-married can be plausibly traced to the long-standing entrenchment of the HutuTutsi distinction in state institutions.
The direct role of the institutionalization of racial identity on national identity documents in the
Rwandan genocide is brought out by the numerous reports, testimonies of survivors as well as confessions of
former Hutu militia men, which confirm that government-issued identity cards were regularly used to identify
and target Tutsis. Such practice, along with hateful out-group labeling – e.g. as “cockroaches” – is fully
consistent with SIT. Even though there were physiological stereotypes associated with the Hutus and Tutsis, the
task of distinguishing individuals from the two communities was complicated by the high rates of intermarriage.
The practice of marking the bearer’s ethnic origin on official identity documents greatly facilitated the conduct of
the genocide by making it “easy to identify Tutsi” (Longman 2001: 355). “Since every Rwandan was required to
carry an identity card, people who guarded barricades demanded that everyone show their cards before being
allowed to pass. Those with “Tutsi” marked on their cards were generally killed on the spot” (Longman 2001:
355). The Rwandan government’s decision to discontinue racial classification on identity cards in the wake of
the massacre exemplifies a not un-common institutional response to instances of conflict.
By contrast, the non-competitive nature of ethnic relations in Lesotho, where there are no ethnic
parties and no recorded outbreak of ethnic violence, can be understood, at least in part, as a product of the
state’s decision to exclude ethnicity from virtually all institutions. It is worth noting that the country’s religious
fractionalization score of .32 suggests a potential cleavage generating at least as much ethnic diversity as was
present in Rwanda, but the decisive distinction between the two countries was the degree to which potential
cleavages were made salient through institutionalization. There is no substantial legacy of categorization, and
since the 1970s, the Lesotho national census does not appear to have recorded any ethnic distinctions. In
response to our query about whether ethnic categories are included on birth or death
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13
certificates, a representative from the Census office wrote that, “we are one country that has one race… the only
data we collect now is on citizenship.” Lesotho follows a single-language policy and there is no distinction by
ethnicity in educational institutions, jobs, voting, leadership positions or any aspect of social life, such as
marriage or living arrangements. Confirming our expectations, even when there was substantial political unrest in
the 1990s, we do not find ethnic violence or anything approaching ethnic civil war.
Burkina Faso and Nigeria: Burkina Faso and Nigeria are two very poor, West African countries, each
with enormous linguistic diversity and similar religious demographies, as approximately half of the population in
each country is Muslim. To be certain, one important difference is the presence of substantial oil reserves in
Nigeria, discovered in 1956, a factor that is well associated with outbreaks of civil war, and statistically
significant in the Fearon and Laitin (2003) analyses. However, a comparative analysis of these two cases
highlights other critical differences in terms of the institutionalization of ethnicity that must be considered when
evaluating the record of violent conflict.
As in the paired comparison described above, very different levels of institutionalized ethnicity
characterize these two countries. Official institutions in Burkina Faso have very rarely made distinctions along
ethnic lines, as reflected by the fact that the IEI score does not rise above 1 for any cleavage, and the state
implements a single language policy in the face of great linguistic heterogeneity. Despite a relatively weak state,
and a history of coups, strikes, and regime changes, we find no evidence of substantial ethnic violence, let alone
ethnic civil war.
In contrast, the Nigerian state has used ethnic categories widely in various institutions of the state.
Nigeria had a high IEI of 5 (for language) starting in the 1960s, the decade of its independence. The next most
highly institutionalized category was religion, which strongly reinforces the linguistic divide along certain
territorial faultlines. In 1967, barely a few years after independence from British colonial rule, and following
various charges of electoral fraud, and the attempts of Eastern Igbo dominated states to secede from the rest of
the country, hostilities between the Hausa-Yoruba controlled-national government and the Igbo dominated
south-eastern province plunged Nigeria into the thirty-month long Biafran civil war. Ethnic claims
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articulated exactly in terms of the categories institutionalized by the state (language and religion), were at the
center of these disputes.
In comparing these cases, we cannot say in any definitive manner that institutional variation was the
ultimate root cause of the different outcomes. But the difference in the institutionalization of ethnicity between
the two countries is striking, and it could certainly predict that ethnic conflict was more likely to be a central
component of the modern history of Nigeria than in Burkina. Moreover, we find clear evidence that conflict
around such institutions in Nigeria helped to fuel subsequent patterns of violent ethnic conflict, albeit short of
civil war.
India and Pakistan: Of the six low-income countries in our database, the two South Asian countries,
India and Pakistan have the highest per capita incomes. India has the highest level of ethnic fractionalization of
all countries in the sample; and Pakistan’s ELF score is just above the mean and median. Extremely high levels
of institutionalization of ethnic categories have characterized the two countries, and this has been associated
with three ethnic civil wars in each country during the 1945-99 period. From a statistical standpoint, the
combination of diversity, institutionalization, and civil war poses a problem of over-determination, but from a
qualitative perspective, substantial historical evidence points to the power of state institutions as a basis for
ethnic conflict and civil war.
The post-colonial Pakistani state’s decision to continue the British practice of institutionalizing
ethnicity served to further strengthen ethnic distinctions. Ethnic quotas for recruitment to the army were
removed but censuses retained the enumeration of a range of ethnic categories; the federal structure continued to
reflect linguistic divisions and also formed the basis for election to the national legislature, such that linguistic
distinctions came to be institutionalized in the new state’s leadership. The enshrining of the linguistic cleavage
in institutions of categorization, autonomy, leadership as well as the recognition of Bangla as a second official
language in addition to Urdu played a crucial role in Bengali mobilization and the electoral success of the
secessionist Awami League, which triggered the 1971 civil war. After over a decade of unrest and many months
of violence, Bengali-speaking East Pakistan seceded to form the state of Bangladesh. This
Institutionalized Ethnicity
15
was, however, only the most extreme manifestation of the many ethnic tensions that have characterized
Pakistan.
Shaken by the secession of Bangladesh, Islamabad attempted to placate other restive ethnic minorities,
such as the Baluchis, Sindhis and Pashtuns by amending the constitution to accommodate their demand for
quotas in educational institutions and jobs in the public sector according to the population of their respective
provinces (Waseem 1997: 225). However, this increased institutionalization of ethnicity only strengthened the
mobilization and advancing of further claims on the part of linguistic minorities. The leaders of the Baluchi,
Sindi and Pashtun ethnic groups today frame their demands for greater recognition and representation in terms
of exactly those state institutions, which have historically incorporated ethnic distinctions - greater ethno-federal
autonomy, increased representation in leadership, education, and jobs in the civil services and armed forces
(Harrison 2006).
Islamabad has faced sustained insurgencies from linguistic minorities in Baluchistan and Sindh. In the
most bitter of four Baluchi insurgencies, from 1973 to 1977, over 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch
were involved in the fighting. In the 1980s, a new cleavage was added to Pakistan’s ethnic cauldron with the
mobilization of Muhajirs, Muslim immigrants from India, through the formation of the militant Muhajir Quami
Movement (MQM). In 1997, the MQM molded itself into the Muttahida Qaumi Movement to reflect its change
of stance from a Mohajir to a Sindhi Nationalist Party. It has been associated with bloody riots, particularly in
the streets of Karachi, since its formation in 1984. The MQM is only one of the many ethnic parties active in
Pakistan’s political arena.
The recent conflict along the religious cleavage in Pakistan has prompted observers to characterize the
country as racked by a “civil war between moderate and extreme Islam” (Amis 2008). The striking increase in
violence associated with religious extremism in Pakistan in this decade is no doubt linked to global developments,
notably the U.S.-led war on terrorist insurgents. The roots of the rise of Islamic extremism in Pakistan, however,
lie in the deepening of the institutionalization of religion since the 1970s. Through the 1950s and 1960s,
Pakistan had a relatively low IEI score of 2 on religion. It is notable that until the 1970s, language was more
deeply institutionalized in Pakistan than religion, and consequently, while the country was
Institutionalized Ethnicity
16
racked by linguistic conflict there was relatively little violence along the religious cleavage. From the 1970s
onwards, however, institutions took on an increasingly religious coloring. Passports came to feature a column for
religion. (Interestingly President Musharraf deleted this column in October 2004 but was forced to reinstate it in
March 2005 after months of fierce protests from hard-line critics.) A separate electorate system was introduced
for religious minorities, according to which of the 217 seats in Pakistan’s National Assembly, four are now
reserved for Christians, four for Hindus and two for others. The sale and consumption of alcohol was banned
for Muslims, and Non-Muslim groups were granted legal autonomy from this law. This increased
institutionalization of religion is widely believed to have fixed and fostered a Muslim identity and paved the way
for the Islamic mobilization and extremism in recent years (Haqqani 2004).
The intensity and frequency with which Pakistani institutions have institutionalized ethnicity has
therefore, undoubtedly been a far more powerful impetus for the population to mobilize, compete and clash
along ethnic lines, than the simple presence of different religious, linguistic or tribal groups.
India mirrors the case of Pakistan, in so far as the country has witnessed conflict along a range of
ethnic cleavages - religion, indigenous, language, and caste, and along the first three cleavages we observe
outbreaks of ethnic civil war, and along the last, substantial ethnic violence.
The deep enshrinement of religion in colonial institutions (IEI=6) led to the solidification of religious
identities and set the stage for religious riots and civil wars in post-Independence India. The British institution of
separate electorates for Muslims is widely credited with mobilizing an atomized Muslim minority in Uttar
Pradesh around the demand for a separate nation (Brass 1974: 170; Misra 2001: 32, 40). The partition of the subcontinent along religious lines in 1947 triggered horrific Hindu-Muslim riots, which claimed at least 300,000
lives. Indian leaders were acutely aware of the role of British policies in deepening divisions among religious
groups in the late colonial period and therefore, pared down the degree to which the state institutionalized
religion. Separate electorates for Muslims were abolished and the central government developed an informal but
consistently followed rule that “no demand for political recognition of a religious group would be considered”
(Brass 1990: 170). This significant lowering of IEI for religion
Institutionalized Ethnicity
17
from 6 to 2 has certainly played an important role in ensuring that the scale of religious conflict, in terms of
rioting in independent India has not approximated the holocaust at the end of British rule.
India has also, since the late 1980s, been characterized by a civil war between Islamic militants and
Indian/ Hindu forces in Kashmir, which has resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. The civil war in
Kashmir is the product of a complex inter-play of domestic and international factors and has undoubtedly been
aggravated, as Laitin and Fearon (2003) suggest, by the region’s mountainous terrain, but the roots of the conflict
can also be traced to British institutionalization of religious identities.
During the colonial period, the census counted religion, affirmative action policies were in place for
Muslims in government education and employment, and Muslims also voted in separate electorates. In the early
twentieth century, the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (AJKNC), an avowedly secular party
organized around a syncretic Kashmiri identity leading a popular mobilization on socio-economic issues found
that it could not fight the religiously structured rules of the game. Simply by virtue of having a predominantly
Muslim membership and opposing the tyrannical rule of a Hindu ruler, it was, despite the many protestations of
its leader, Abdullah, to the contrary, branded as being a Muslim separatist organization. Hindu and Sikh troops
were brought into to quell the agitation, which only served to further mobilize the population around an Islamic
identity (Singh 1998: 336). By the end of British rule, there had emerged a distinct Islamic identity in Kashmir,
around which many (but by no means all) Muslims mobilized. This process was strengthened by the granting of
autonomy to Muslims to be governed by Shari’a law, as well as the subsequent domestic and international
events, and in the late 1980s, the valley erupted into violent conflict between Muslim militias and Indian/
Hindu forces.
The overlapping institutionalization of religion and language constituted the backdrop for the civil war
in Punjab, between Sikh insurgents demanding an independent state of “Khalistan” and Indian armed forces
which claimed 25,000 lives (Horowitz 2002: 484). In so far as Punjab is a relatively prosperous province, close to
the national capital and characterized by a flat terrain, it would not be a likely candidate for the outbreak of civil
war in Laitin and Fearon’s framework (2003).
Institutionalized Ethnicity
18
British institutionalization of the Sikh religious category was a key factor in the development of a
distinct Sikh identity. In fact up through the 1880s and beyond, “the Sikhs regarded themselves and were
regarded by everybody else as an integral part of Hindus” (Sahni cited in Brass 1974: 282). By the late nineteenth
century colonial administrators had designated Sikhs as a “martial race,” which entitled them to preferential
recruitment in the Army, equal to almost twenty times their share of the population. The Army required all
enlisted Sikhs to undergo “baptism,” which resulted in a very large increase in the number of Sikhs enumerated
in the census. Military commanders required a strict observance of Sikh customs and ceremonies (Fox 1985:
142). The British seemed quite aware that such institutionalization would harden Sikh identity in so far as an
official with the Criminal Intelligence Department wrote that “Sikhs in the Indian army have been studiously
“nationalized” or encouraged to regard themselves as a totally distinct and separate nation.” (cited in Fox 1985:
142). Fox notes that “Some British officials went so far as to congratulate the colonial regime for ‘buttressing
the crumbling edifice of the Sikh religion’” (1985: 142).
This institutionalization of Sikh identity in the colonial army no doubt legitimized and encouraged
Sikhs to demand separate electorates and special privileges as regards state employment, which brought them
into conflict with Hindus. British as well as the post-Independence Indian authorities’ institutionalization of
language facilitated the overlaying and consequently, further deepening of the Sikh-Hindu divide in Punjab with
Punjabi-Hindi tensions.
The state’s institutionalization of language boundaries is longstanding. Censuses in India since 1881
have enumerated mother tongues. The difficulties encountered by officials in ascertaining the mother tongue of
respondents, which are recorded in various census reports, indicates that there were no clearly defined language
groups out there to be counted (e.g. Brass 1974: 292). In the religiously polarized context of turn-of-the-century
Punjab, census operations emerged as the key battleground for the conflict between religious associations,
which encouraged Hindus and Sikhs to declare their mother tongue as Hindi and Punjabi respectively. The
massive fluctuation in the numbers of Hindi and Punjabi speakers in the early-mid twentieth century censuses
attests to the power of institutions in (re)molding ethnic identities. In light of their grammatical and lexical
similarities and mutual comprehensibility, Punjabi and Hindi, together with Urdu, had
Institutionalized Ethnicity
19
been traditionally classified as “Hindustani.” The 1921 census shows that Punjabi was the language of Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs alike (Brass 1974: 294). However, state institutionalization of religion and language fostered
the emergence of a deep Sikh-Punjabi vs. Hindu-Hindi fissure. The sharp drop in the numbers of Punjabi
speakers in the 1961 census indicates that Punjabi came to be seen exclusively as a Sikh language and Hindi was
recognized as a Hindu tongue.
The early 1950s were marked by widespread mobilization in India around the demand for the
reorganization of the country along linguistic lines. In light of the intensity of the mobilization, Nehru, despite
his personal fears, conceded the formation of linguistic provinces, except in the case of Punjab. The mutually
reinforcing nature of the linguistic-religious divide meant that the demand for a Punjabi-speaking province was
virtually identical to the demand for a Sikh-majority province. In line with the “rule” of not institutionalizing
religion, New Delhi, therefore, refused the demand of the Sikh organizations for a Punjabi suba until the call
was framed purely in linguistic terms in 1966. The change in rhetoric did not, however, change the fact that the
new state of Punjab was a Punjabi-speaking but also a Sikh-majority province. It was the creation of such a
province, which allowed religious tensions in the 1980s to take on a secessionist coloring. A number of sociopolitical factors, notably Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s covert support of a fundamentalist Sikh preacher in
order to undermine the opposition parties and bring the Congress to power in the state, were critical in triggering
the ethnic civil war between Sikh militias and the Indian army. However, this discussion has attempted to show
that it was state institutionalization of ethnic categories, which differentiated, mobilized and brought the SikhPunjabi identity into confrontation with a Hindu-Hindi identity in the first place. British institutionalization of
religion and language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the deepening of
institutionalization of language in India in the 1950s-60s were key underlying factors for the outbreak of civil
war in Punjab in the 1980s.
The institutionalization of the indigenous/ tribal category (IEI =6 in all but one decade from the 1940s
to the 2000s) has played an important role in tribal mobilization in favor of their own states as well as ethnic civil
wars in the Northeast between tribal groups and Indian security forces. During the colonial period, tribal identity
was counted in censuses and served as the basis for affirmative action in government
Institutionalized Ethnicity
20
employment and education, political representation in provincial legislatures, and autonomy in so far as tribal
courts were allowed to exercise (limited) jurisdiction. The Indian government retained the demarcation of what
came to be termed “scheduled tribes” in each of these institutions. In light of such deep and longstanding
institutionalization, it is unsurprising that a powerful tribal identity emerged in India and the Northeast, which
has the highest proportion of tribals, has witnessed a series of conflicts along tribal lines, the most visible and
violent of which has been the secessionist Naga insurgency, which began in the 1950s.
This civil war must be understood as a combination of socio-economic and political factors, and like in
Kashmir, the insurgents have been aided by the mountainous terrain of the region but the institutionalization of
the indigenous cleavage has been a key underlying factor. The central decision in 1963 to form the state of
Nagland, as a homeland for the Nagas, did not subdue the insurgency as Nehru had anticipated, but only
allowed “extremist” insurgents to further consolidate the Naga identity and continue their secessionist struggle.
The establishment of the precedent of enshrining tribal identity in institutions of ethno-federal autonomy also
motivated other, occasionally inchoate tribal groups to mobilize for a separate province and 4 new states have
since been created in response to such demands in the north-east. In 2001, India’s newest “tribal state,”
Jharkhand was created in north-central India after a long and occasionally violent agitation.
Caste, arguably the most prominent of ethnic cleavages in India, enshrined in colonial and post-colonial
institutions (IEI=5 from 1940-2000s) has been the basis for frequent and intense inter-caste clashes, but we
should note that this did not lead to ethnic civil war, and as such these observations dampen support for the
institutional hypotheses in the statistical analyses reported above. Nonetheless, the basic implications of our
theory still hold: Reports of the colonial census detail the enormous public interest in caste returns exemplified
most starkly by the thousands of applications to census commissioners from caste groups demanding a change
in their name or placement in the caste hierarchy. In the post-colonial period the preference policies in
employment and education for lower caste groups have triggered frequent and intense movements on the part of
castes wanting to be classified as “backward” in order to avail of such institutional benefits as well as countermobilizations by higher castes against the increase of lower caste quotas. Many
Institutionalized Ethnicity
21
such mobilizations have turned violent, most prominently the student protests against the central decision to
implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission to greatly expand quotas for backward castes in
1989, and the agitation in 2008 by Gujjars in favor of the institutional demotion of their status from “backward”
to “scheduled tribe,” to allow them to avail of the same benefits as their rivals, the tribal Meenas. The frequency
and intensity of inter-caste violence in India has prompted scholars and journalists to speak of “caste war”
(Bayly 2001: 342; Economist 2000; Ramesh 2005).
Middle-income countries
Among the middle-income countries, again an institutional approach provides a substantially better set
of predictions for the outbreak of ethnic civil wars than does a demographic one. Within this set of 7 countries,
it is true that all three country-decades containing ethnic civil wars (South Africa 1980s, Philippines 1960s, and Sri
Lanka 1980s) occur in the context of at least medium ethnic fractionalization. However, we also find that all
countries with high IEI in this group at some point experience ethnic civil war; and there are no instances of
ethnic civil war in the absence of institutionalized ethnicity. By contrast, in Thailand, as in Burkina Faso, high
fractionalization scores are associated with an absence of ethnic civil wars.
South Africa: The case of ethnic violence in South Africa is so clearly tied to a set of institutional
origins that extended discussion is unnecessary.7 South Africa, like India, has long had multiple ethnic cleavages,
but clearly the highest and most consistent degree of institutionalization has been along the racial cleavage,
which as seen in figure 1 reaches the maximum level of institutionalization of any cleavage in any other country
(IEI=9). As an upper-middle-income country, not an oil producer, with largely non-mountainous and
contiguous territory, no other factors identified by Fearon and Laitin as predictors of insurgency can account
for this civil war. Of course, the very political struggle in South Africa was to gain equal rights for people of
color and to end apartheid – the most extreme version of institutionalized white supremacy, which combined
harsh pass laws that restricted movement according to one’s racial classification, job reservations, separate voter
rolls, the denationalization of Africans, and prohibitions against sexual
7
The following draws on Thompson 1990, Marx 1998, and Lieberman 2003.
Institutionalized Ethnicity
22
contact across the color bar. Although the legacy of racially-based conflict can be traced to the arrival of Dutch
settlers in 1652, in fact, the bloodiest conflict in Southern African history was between “white” groups – British
settlers and Dutch-descended Afrikaans-speakers – in the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902. At the dawn of the
20th century, the axis of conflict had not been pre-ordained by demographics, and the conclusion of that war left
unsettled the question of how citizenship would be defined and with what rights for various competing factions.
Constitutional decisions to establish citizenship along “racial” or color lines were highly determinative
of the future of the country, and this divide would become the central basis of deepening political conflict.
While the relative strength of the state made the mounting of an effective insurgency difficult, a combination of
growing mobilization, international sanctions and pressures on the regime, and support for the insurgents,
ultimately led to an escalation of anti-state violence in the 1980s mobilized by the armed wings of liberation
movements such as the African National Congress (ANC), the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO) and
the Pan African Congress (PAC) that Fearon and Laitin classify as an ethnic civil war. From a purely
demographic standpoint, other cleavages, including religion and language, are the basis for substantial cultural
differences. The apartheid state tried to institutionalize intra-African ethnic distinctions through the creation of
so-called “ethnic homelands.” However, the extreme nature of the institutionalization of race, and the perceived
illegitimacy of those ethnic homelands, help to explain why the most extreme forms of violent conflict have
been between black insurgent groups and the apartheid state government.
Philippines: The case of Philippines brings out the importance of a number of factors highlighted by
Fearon and Laitin (2003), notably a weak central authority and non-contiguous territory, in increasing a country’s
vulnerability to civil wars – both non-ethnic and ethnic, and as such turns out to be a weak case for exploring
our theory of the effect of institutionalized ethnicity. The Philippines has witnessed two non-ethnic, primarily
class-based civil wars - the Huk Rebellion in the 1940s, an insurgency by disenfranchised peasants and others
formerly active in the resistance against the Japanese occupiers during World War II, and a war against the New
People’s Army, a Communist-leaning group, which continues sporadically to the present day, as well as a
religious civil war with the Muslim Moros in Mindanao in the south since the 1970s (Schiavo-
Institutionalized Ethnicity
23
Campo & Judd 2005: 1). The Mindanao conflict is believed to be the second-oldest on earth, dating back five
centuries to the coming of Islam to the region (Schiavo-Campo & Judd 2005: 1). The Moros resisted both
Spanish and American colonial rule, and had appealed to the US government for an arrangement that would to
allow them to live separately from Christian Filipinos (Buendia 2007: 6). In an argument that hints at how the
lack of institutionalization of ethnic cleavages might lead to ethnic assimilation, Buendia writes that “the denial
of their petition…led Muslim leaders to reconfigure their Moro identity in line with the forthcoming Philippine
nation-state. Muslim leaders declared themselves as ‘Filipinos’ ….In the 1934 Constitutional Convention several
elected Muslim Constitutional delegates, led by Alauya Alonto, called upon their fellow delegates not only to
cease calling Muslims Moros but also to accept Muslims as part of the Filipino nation.” (2007: 5-6). By the
1960s, however, a Moro-Muslim identity had clearly resurfaced as exemplified by the formation of a number of
insurgent groups, notably the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which demanded a separate Bangsa
Moro—a Muslim homeland. Scholars point to the massive state-sponsored migration of Christians into
Mindanao and heavy-handed army responses to Muslim mobilization as triggers for the “Re-invention of
Muslim identity”(Buendia 2007:5). The existence of religious distinctions in the census and on birth certificates
would have only reinforced this process. The way in which ethnic conflict might result in a greater
institutionalization of ethnicity is brought out by the state’s attempt to placate Muslim insurgent groups by
granting Muslims autonomy (by allowing the operation of separate Shari’a courts) in 1997, and ethno-federal
autonomy (by establishing the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao) in 1990. However, such religious
institutionalization has also generated further conflict in so far as insurgent groups split over whether or not they
accepted the creation of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. That the splinter group, the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), organized itself along an explicitly Islamic dimension might be connected to
the substantial degree of institutionalization of the Muslim cleavage in Philippines (IEI=3).
Sri Lanka: We also find modest support for the institutional hypothesis in the Sri Linkan case. To
explain this, first we must discuss the coding of cases: In 1971 the state encountered an armed Marxist youth
rebellion led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or the People's Liberation Front. In 1987, the JVP
Institutionalized Ethnicity
24
launched a second rebellion. Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) classification of this as a non-ethnic civil war, just like the
first, neglects the key Tamil-Sinhala dimension of this insurgency (but to be conservative, we do not include this
as an ethnic civil war in the statistical analyses). In the early 1980s, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
launched a war for the creation of an independent Tamil homeland. The JVP’s second insurgency took place,
and was greatly influenced by this context. Scholars, such as Moore, note that “The socialist or Marxist elements
in the JVP’s doctrine and practice were increasingly neglected in favor of a program, style and tactics, which
were increasingly Sinhalese chauvinist and indigenist, and directed against…Tamil ethnic groups” (1993: 599).
The 1987 JVP civil war is, therefore, more correctly understood as an ethnic, Tamil-Sinhala civil war.
The Tamil-Sinhala conflict represents, like in Punjab, the juxtaposition of mutually reinforcing religious
and linguistic cleavages. Almost all Tamils are Hindu and an overwhelming majority of Sinhala speakers are
Buddhist. State institutionalization of both these cleavages (IEI for religion has remained at 2; IEI for language
has increased from 2 in the 1950s-60s to 3 in the 1970s-90s and 4 in 2000) has been critical in the emergence of
the Tamil-Sinhala civil war.
Like in India and Pakistan, British institutionalization of ethnic identity in Sri Lanka formed the
backdrop for ethnic mobilization and conflict. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the
British administration followed a policy of “communal representation,” by which Tamils occupied government
jobs and enjoyed political representation far in excess of their proportion of the population. The discontinuation
of such communal representation in 1928 reduced Tamils to “a weakened minority” and is widely seen as the
catalyst for the emergence of Tamil nationalism (Herath 2002: 43, Rajasingham 2001). Tamil organizations
campaigned for the restoration of the ratio of Tamils to Sinhalese in the legislature but their petitions were
denied, which bred resentment.
The Tamil-Sinhala divide was deepened in the post-colonial period by the enumeration of religious and
linguistic groups in the census, the marking of Tamil identity on birth and death certificates and the granting of
autonomy to ethnic and religious groups to practice their own customary law. The declaration of Sinhala as the
only language of Sri Lanka in 1956 and the foremost place granted to Buddhism in the 1972
Institutionalized Ethnicity
25
Constitution are recognized by scholars as well as leaders of the Tamil movement as the critical factors in
transforming simmering Tamil discontent into a hardened hostility to the Sri Lankan state. State
institutionalization of the Tamil-Sinhala distinction not only laid the foundation for the civil war but also
facilitated its conduct. Reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide, the decision by the Sri Lankan government to
specify the bearer’s linguistic-religious identity on national identity cards issued after the 1970s, allowed
Sinhalese mobs to target Tamils during riots in Colombo in the 1980s.
Brazil: The Brazilian case highlights in an extreme form the limits of demographic approaches to
ethnic politics. The Soviet-atlas based (ELF) data, used in the Fearon and Laitin analyses indicate a highly
homogeneous country, while Fearon’s ethnic fractionalization indicator describes Brazil as highly heterogeneous.
Neither summary score does a particularly good job of characterizing ethnic politics in Brazil, while a view of
state institutions does provide such a portrait.
Despite widely observed associations between skin color, cultural practices, and income inequality,
which could be the basis for ethnic conflict, there was no substantial ethnic violence, let alone ethnic civil war,
in the 20th century. Scholars such as Telles (2004), Marx (1998), and Nobles (2000) have shared the insight that a
relatively peaceful ethnic landscape is due in large part because, unlike in countries with a sharply divided racial
climate such as the US or South Africa, Brazilian institutions never defined racial-group membership in a sharp or
consistent manner; nor did they impose legal segregation. Our IEI scores systematically detect these historical
processes and cross-country differences. And beyond the omission of ethnic categories in most state institutions
in Brazil, the positive use of a single language policy almost surely was instrumental in promoting an integrated
polity. Huge populations of African-, German-, Italian-, and Japanese-descended people live in Brazil, but most
speak Portuguese, and only Portuguese, causing them to identify as Brazilians rather than in ethnic terms.
While ethnic demographics can shift owing to rates of inter-marriage, conversions, and migration
patterns, and such factors have sharply affected the likelihood of conflict, institutions also change, sometimes in
response to conflict, and sometimes for other reasons. Owing to a range of factors, including repeated scholarly
analyses finding clear relationships between skin color socio-economic deprivation, as well as
Institutionalized Ethnicity
26
international influences and trends, in 2001, the Brazilian government instituted historically unprecedented
quotas for racial groups for jobs and university admissions. These changes are identified in the upward trend of
the IEI plot for Brazil during the decade starting in 2000. Previously, the only Brazilian institution with an ethnic
dimension was the census, which in most decades since 1940, enumerated the population according to race and
religion. It remains to be seen whether or not this institutional change will be associated with further
intensification of ethnic identification and potentially ethnic conflict.
It is worth reiterating that Brazil, with among the highest levels of income and wealth inequality in the
world, and with such disparities highly correlated to skin color, should have been a prime candidate for civil war
given a theory focused on the mobilization of material grievances. What the historical reflects instead, is how
blurred boundaries dampened the potential for such mobilization.
Botswana, Costa Rica, and Thailand: When compared with Brazil, similar institutional histories
characterize Botswana, Costa Rica, and Thailand. In each, the presence of cultural diversity and early
institutionalization of ethnic categories was confronted with deliberate state approaches to eliminate ethnic
categories and to consolidate nation-building through assimilationist policies. In Botswana, for example, one
scholar notes of the founding president (1966-80) – an African man who married a white, British woman –
“President Khama wanted Botswana’s nonracial policy to serve as an example for other states in the
region…Botswana and apartheid South Africa represented antipodes of racial etiquette, with Botswana’s
relaxed society offering a welcome alternative, particularly to those South Africans who sought an antidote to
apartheid” (Dale 1995: 6). In Costa Rica, a substantial black minority has resided since the migration of West
Indians in the 19th century, and we identified significant discriminatory legislation in the 1930s, including
restricted patterns of travel and employment according to color (Helmuth 2000; Harpelle 1994). However, as
Purcell and Sawyers (1993) document, the late 1940s and early 1950s witnessed the integration of blacks into
mainstream political parties, and entry into a number of political offices, but this was done with “no affirmative
government policy” (Purcell & Sawyers 1993: 306). In the case of Thailand, a temporary allowance for local
autonomy was granted to the four Southern Malay-Muslim states (Girling 1981: 53), but by 1938, this gave way
to the culmination of a strong nation-building program, one that insisted on the use of Thai
Institutionalized Ethnicity
27
language, and the setting aside of Islamic laws on marriage and inheritance in favor of Thai Buddhist laws
(Ferrer 1999: 123).
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, these countries were understood internally and by
outsiders to be largely homogeneous, but this set of social “facts” must be understood in terms of institutional,
not demographic origins. In turn, it becomes less surprising that these countries did not experience ethnic civil
wars or ethnic violence more generally. More recently, in all three countries, particularly in Botswana and
Thailand, small ethnic minorities have begun to challenge their perceived exclusions owing to such practices,
and we observe some increase in institutionalization. There is no “end of history” for ethnic group construction,
and these cases, like several others in our analysis, highlight that ethnic group formation can wax, wane, and wax
again. Our theory says little about non-ethnic civil wars, so the fact that one occurred in Costa Rica during the
1940s is not consequential for our reading of the evidence – except that its resolution in the 1949 constitution
marked the onset of an assimilationist nation-building project. In short, these three cases strongly confirm our
central hypothesis.
Conclusions
We recognize that with our medium-sized, non-random sample, the strength of observed patterns and
relationships may not represent patterns that exist within the full universe of country cases. The findings are,
however, strongly suggestive that we have identified a powerful and observable correlate of violent ethnic
conflict, one that relates much more strongly to constructivist understandings of ethnic identification and
mobilization. It is fair to ask whether the very institutionalization of ethnic categories is itself a reflection of
underlying ethnic conflict, and to a degree, the answer is certainly yes. However, as we observe, states often
choose to respond to severe forms of ethnic conflict by de-institutionalizing ethnic categories. Clearly, further
analysis is necessary to go back in the causal chain. Notwithstanding, our efforts still go well beyond prior
analyses that focus on ethnic demographics or ethnic power relations, because for the most part, such counts
themselves depend upon institutions.
Institutionalized Ethnicity
From a normative or prescriptive standpoint, we recognize that there may be countervailing political
or social equity reasons for a state to institutionalize ethnic categories, but our findings suggest that such
policies are likely to lead to increased chance of ethnic civil war. The implications of this study may extend
beyond the problem of civil war. Scholars have identified a range of theoretical implications of ethnic
dividedness, including hypothesized effects on the prevalence of other forms of violent conflict (apart from
civil war); the provision of public goods; and regime outcomes. Our institutional approach may yield useful
insights for further empirical explorations of these propositions, complementing or replacing existing
demographic measures of ethnicity. Future research ought to investigate, from a more dynamic perspective,
the causes and consequences of the institutionalization of ethnic categories.
28
29
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Table 1: State institutionalization of ethnic categories
Institution
Type
Counting and
identifying
Politics and
authority
Space and
personal
interaction
Opportunities
for personal
advancement
Institution
Evidence of institutionalization of ethnic categories
1. Census
Any mention of ethnic categories or labels on questionnaire
or enumeration form.
Any mention of ethnic categories or labels on documents.
2. ID Cards/
passports
3. Delegation of
autonomy
4. Voting and civic
engagement
regulation
5. Leadership
regulation
There is any legal provision for separate laws or authority
for ethnic groups
The government uses ethnic identity in any explicit manner
to assign voting rights, responsibilities
The government reserves certain executive, judicial, or
legislative positions based on ethnic quotas or preference
policies. (Note distinctions between affirmative preferences
and restrictions)
6. Spatial separation
of people
The government legalizes any separation of people by ethnic
group in terms of residential areas or use of public facilities.
(Note distinctions between reservations, ethno-federalism,
forced segregation, and denationalization)
7. Marriage law
The government makes any legal prohibitions on marriage
across ethnic lines.
8.Employment
regulation
Official sanction of use of ethnic identity for hiring decisions
(Note distinctions between affirmative preferences and
restrictions)
9. Education
regulation
Official sanction of ethnic identity for selection/admissions
(Note distinctions between affirmative preferences and
restrictions)
Institutionalized Ethnicity
30
Table 2: Data for Correlates of Ethnic Civil War in 13 Countries
Burkina
Faso
Nigeria
India
Pakistan
Lesotho
Rwanda
Botswana
Brazil
Costa Rica
Philippines
South
Africa
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Ethnic frac
(ANM)
Ethnic frac
(Fearon)
%
Pop (000)
Mountain 1960s
Oil
Year if New GDP/Cap (1960s)
exporter State (1945-99)
$US PPP
0.68
0.7
0
4,974
No
1960
407
0.87
0.89
0.64
0.22
0.13
0.51
0.07
0.07
0.75
0.88
0.8
0.81
0.53
0.25
0.18
0.35
0.55
0.24
0.16
0.88
2
13
43
82
73
0
3
22
21
8
57,898
482,852
111,321
1,012
3,244
586
82,963
1,467
32,009
19,948
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
1960
1947
1947
1966
1962
1966
566
753
805
484
475
710
1950
2396
1252
2561
0.47
0.66
0.43
0.43
7
5
11,047
30,366
No
No
1948
1946
Source: Fearon and Laitin (2003) and author averaging of population and GDP/Capita
1205
1139
31
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Table 3: Ethnic Civil Wars (1945-99) identified By Fearon and Laitin, and Our Country-Cleavage Re-coding
Our cleavage coding
From Fearon and Laitin (2003)
replication data
Country
Years
Nigeria
196770
1952198293
19891971
199399
India
India
India
Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan
Rwanda
197377
196265
1990-
Philippines
South
Africa
Sri Lanka
1968198394
1983-
Rwanda
Race
Lang
Religion
X
X
Civil war case
name
Biafra
Label on
figure 1
A
N.East Rebels
Sikhs
B
C
Kashmir
Bangladesh
MQM:
Sindhis v.
Mohajirs
Baluchistan
D
E
F
X
X
F
X
Post-rev strife
H
X
RPF,
genocide
MNLF, MILF
ANC, PAC,
Azapo
LTTE, etc.
I
X
J
K
X
L
Caste
Indig
X
X
X
X
X
X
Other
32
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Table 4: Proportion of (country-cleavage-decade) cases with ethnic civil war onset
State institution
1. Census
2. ID Cards
3. Delegation of
autonomy
4. Voting
5. Leadership
regulation
6. Spatial separation of
people
7. Marriage law
8.Employment
regulation
9. Education
regulation
Ethnic categories are
institutionalized
9.2% (11 of 120)
26.7% (4 of 15)
13.2% (7 of 53)
Ethnic categories are
not institutionalized
1.5% (1 of 66)
4.7% (8 of 171)
3.8% (5 of 133)
9.1% (1 of 11)
12.2% (5 of 41)
6.3% (11 of 175)
4.8% (7 of 145)
.13
2.87#
10% (4 of 40)
5.5% (8 of 146)
1.06
6.7% (1 of 15)
19.4% (7 of 36)
6.4% (11 of 171)
3.3% (5 of 150)
.001
12.49**
22.6% (7 of 31)
3.2% (5 of 155)
16.03**
Chi-sq
4.13*
11.05**
5.61*
Table 5: Proportion of (country-cleavage-decade) cases with ethnic civil war ongoing (includes onset)
State institution
1. Census
2. ID Cards
3. Delegation of
autonomy
4. Voting
5. Leadership
regulation
6. Spatial separation of
people
7. Marriage law
8.Employment
regulation
9. Education
regulation
p < .10, * p < 0.05, ***p < .01
Ethnic categories are
institutionalized
19.2% (23 of 120)
33.3% (5 of 15)
35.9% (19 of 53)
Ethnic categories are
not institutionalized
3.0% (2 of 66)
11.7% (20 of 171)
4.5% (6 of 133)
9.53**
5.55*
31.99**
18.2% (2 of 11)
26.8% (11 of 41)
13.1% (23 of 175)
9.7% (14 of 145)
.23
8.10**
27.5% (11 of 40)
9.6% (14 of 146)
8.66**
20.0% (3 of 15)
38.9% (14 of 36)
12.9% (22 of 171)
7.3% (11 of 150)
.60
24.8**
41.9% (13 of 31)
7.7% (12 of 155)
26.0**
Chi-sq
33
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Table 6: Institutionalized Ethnicity Index (IEI) Summary Statistics
N
Mean
Median
Min
Max
SD
Full sample
186
1.95
1
0
9
2.12
Ethnic civil
war onset?
YES
Ethnic civil
war onset?
NO
Ethnic civil
war ongoing?
YES
Ethnic civil
war ongoing?
NO
12
3.92
3.5
2
9
2.07
174
1.81
1
0
9
2.06
25
4.04
3
1
9
2.01
161
1.62
1
0
9
1.95
t-test of
sample
means
3.42**
5.75**
34
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Table 7: Logit Analysis of Ethnic Civil War Onset and Ongoing Fighting in 13 Countries (1945-99), by
country-cleavage-decade
Oil exporter
(1)
(2)
Ethnic civil war Ethnic civil war
onset
onset
0.565
-0.346
(0.676) (0.780)
(3)
Ethnic civil war
fighting
1.594**
(0.572)
(4)
Ethnic civil war
fighting
0.877
(0.683)
Log percent
mountainous
0.361
(0.281)
0.133
(0.291)
0.443
(0.313)
0.291
(0.344)
Ethnic
fractionalization
1.203
(1.186)
-1.119
(1.017)
2.688#
(1.420)
0.739
(1.387)
Log GDP/ capita
-0.350
(0.620)
-0.883
(0.738)
0.322
(0.505)
0.0401
(0.622)
0.474**
(0.150)
Institutionalized
Ethnicity Index (IEI)
cons
N
pseudo R2
-1.899
(4.706)
186
0.038
2.504
(5.314)
186
0.140
Standard errors in parentheses
< .10, * p < 0.05, * < .01
Sources: Tables 2, 3,
Lieberman and Singh IEI Database
0.381**
(0.141)
-7.050#
(3.837)
186
0.095
-4.425
(4.665)
186
0.171
35
Institutionalized Ethnicity
Figure 1: Institutionalized Ethnicity and Ethnic Civil War By Cleavage in 13 Countries
Brazil
Botswana
o_
Costa
Rica
Burkina
Faso
in -
o-
^
»' ■- » "■ '■'
**4fc4!
Migo ,i
Lesotho
fffm H ■ w
>**
Philippines
a
Sou:'Africa
Rwanda
tt*
Sri Lanka
9=d—
£=ft—ft A-^ft=£
ri'.i
i1*-
i:i'
ill
1920
1944
i960
t9W
Thailand
IT)
O-
!^p_^U*t=<U^
------------------- ■ ----------------- ■----------------- 1 ----------------- r-
TWO
1WD
1950
19M:
— iei_race
— ieijang
— ici_indig
Source: Lieberman and Singh Database and Table 3
— iei_caste
> --- iei_relig
---- iei tribeoth
2000
n -------------- 1 ------------ 1------------- 1 ---------1970
'940
1840
1H0
2000
Institutionalized Ethnicity
36
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