Jalali Si Lipset, Racial and Ethnic Conflicts

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Racial and Ethnic Conflicts: A Global Perspective

Rita Jalali; Seymour Martin Lipset

Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 107, No. 4. (Winter, 1992-1993), pp. 585-606.

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Racial nd Ethnic ConflictsGlobal Perspective

RITA JALALISEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSETRace and ethnicity provide the most striking example of a generalfailure among experts to anticipate social developments in varying types of soci-eties. Until recently, there was considerable consensus among many Marxist and

non-Marxist scholars that ethnicity reflected the conditions of traditional society,in which people lived in small communities isolated from one another and inwhich mass communications and transportation were limited. Many expectedthat industrialization, urbanization, and the spread of education would reduceethnic consciousness, and that universalism would replace particularism. Marx-ists were certain that socialism would mean the end of the ethnic tension andconsciousness that exited in pre-socialist societies. Non-Marxists sociologists inwestern countries assumed that industialization and modernization would do thesame. Assimilation of minorities into a large integrated whole was viewed as theinevitable future.It is now clearly established that the assimilationist assumptions are not valid.Most parts of the globe have been touched by ethnic conflict. While the postcolo-nial countries continue to experience the effects of ethnic polarization, ethnicpassions have now engulfed regions of the world that until recently were thoughtto have solved the nationality problem. Ethnic conflict now threatens most

RITA JALALI sociologist teaches at Franklin and Marshall Colleg e and shortly will be moving toMichigan State University. SEYMOUR M ARTIN LIPSET is the Hazel Chair of Public Policy atGeorge Mason University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Heis the current president of the American Sociological Association . His mo st recent book is Continental


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former communist countries and has led to the political fragmentation of Yugo-slavia and Soviet Union. From the movements for autonomy in Canada, theUnited Kingdom, Spain, and France to the strivings for a more formally plural-istic society in the United States, ethnic and racial cleavages have become a partof the political landscape of many of the western industrialized countries.Ethnic movements have emerged under a variety of circumstance and encom-passed many forms. They have emerged among large minority groups (Quebecand East Pakistan), and among small ones (Frisians in Holland, Jurassians inSwitzerland, and Gorkhas in India). They encompass both cultural and economiccomponents. For example, in Wales and Scotland the issues are more economic,while in the Basque country and Quebec they are more cultural. Within thesame country, for example, India, ethnic protest has emerged in backward, poorregions as in Nagaland and in the advanced regions like Punjab. Ethnic politicalmobilization has occurred in democracies (India and Belgium) and in authori-tarian systems (France s Spain and Uganda); in centralized states (France andSenegal) and in federal systems (the former Yugoslavia and India).A variety of cultural markers have provided the basis for ethnic mobilization:the use of skin color in the United States, language in Canada, tribal loyalties inmuch of Africa, religion in Sudan and Northern Ireland. Some movements de-mand outright secession, others aim for cultural autonomy, while still otherspursue equal rights within the prevailing political system. In all instances, themovements are powerful expressions of group identity and a desire for a moreequitable distribution of political and economic resources.The problems that ethnic diversity pose for efforts at nation-building have, asWalker Connor points out, been largely ignored by social scientists concernedwith the topic. The territorial boundaries of states rarely coincide with ethnicboundaries. Of a total of 132 contemporary states, only 12 (9.1 percent) can bedescribed as essentially homogenous from an ethnic viewpoint. . In someinstances, the number of groups within a state runs into the hundreds, and in 53states (40.2 percent of the total), the population is divided into more than fivesignificant groups. 'Conversely, there are ethnic groups widely dispersed over various states. Thus,although there is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews form only 16 percent of all Jews.They are dispersed over thirty-nine other countries, with the largest number (44percent of all Jews) residing in the United States.' There are other examples,including the Arabs who may be found in more than thirty-seven states, Malaysin over seven, and Kurds in over six.3 In Europe, 40 percent of Albanians liveoutside of Albania, and 23 percent of Hungarians reside outside H~ n g a r y . ~

Walker Con nor, Nation-building or Nation-destroying? World Politics 24 (April 1972): 320.Gunnar Nielsso n, States and 'Nation-Groups' a Global Taxonom y in Edward A Tiryakianand Ronald Rogow ski, eds., New Nationalisms of the Developed West Toward Explanation (Boston:Allen Unw in, 1985), 35.


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RACIAL ND ETHNIC CONFLICTS 587

The interaction of groups from diverse ethnic backgrounds often is accompa-nied by intolerance and conflict. The costs to society of such conflicts are enor-mous: denial of human rights, breakdown of political order, decline of economicperformance, and escalation into civil and regional wars. Ethnically driven vio-lence has ravaged many regions of the Third World and created an exodus ofrefugees. By one estimate, more than half the world's thirty million refugees atthe beginning of 1990 were fleeing from civil wars and repression which were theresult of communally-based conflict^. ^Such tensions have also had an enormous impact on the economic developmentof countries. The poor performance of the Sri Lankan economy since the mid-1980s can be traced largely to ethnically driven conflict^.^ They have createdfamine conditions in African counties like Ethiopia and Sudan, where millionshave faced starvation as interethnic warfare has prevented farmers from growingfood.Ethnic conflicts also entail international complications as they repeatedly pro-voke military intervention by outside powers. Libya, for example, was in partmotivated by ethnic considerations when it got involved in the Chadian civil war,as was India in Bangladesh (earlier East Pakistan) and in Sri Lanka.The political instability prevailing in many parts of the Third World can alsobe traced in large part to interethnic conflict. In Sri Lanka, for example, therewas a deterioration of democracy mainly because of an explosion of ethnicconflict into violent insurgency, which polarized the polity, embittered allgroups, and provided an excuse for increasingly authoritarian measures. 'The effects of ethnic cleavages on prospects for peace and democracy, however,vary with the pattern of cleavage and the way they articulate with political struc-tures. Where ethnic identities are crosscutting, they are less likely to threatenpolitical stability. In India, because major religious communities are split intomany language communities which in turn are stratified into caste and classformations an eagerness to utilize one affinity by a political leadership thatseeks an easy constituency of popular support may encourage other leaders toexploit the other affinities of the same individual. Thus, for example, the easiercourse of exclusive Hindu mobilization, by seizing upon the Hindi languageloyalty in northern India, created negative political reactions among Hindus whospoke other language^. ^ On the other hand, ethnic cleavages in Sri Lanka and

Ted Robert Gurr , Third Wo rld Minorities at Risk Since 1945 (Background paper prepared forthe Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Cold War Third World, U.S. Institute of Peace,October 1990), 7L. Kenneth Hubbell, Political and Economic Discriminationin Sri La nk aV inMichael L. Wyzan,ed., The Political Econom y of Ethnic Discrimination and Affirmative Action: A Comp arative Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1990).Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing


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Malaysia are cumulative (with linguistic, religious, regional, racial, and classcleavages overlapping) and thus a threat to democracy. In this article, we seekto deal with some of the causes of interethnic conflict and the strategies adoptedby countries to manage such conflict.

Latin American scholars have argued that their societies are not racist and thatclass rather than ethnic cleavages predominate. Yet in spite of racial and ethnicpluralism, stratification correlates with racial ancestry in almost all of the nationsof the region. The privileged classes are largely of European background and/or are lighter skin-colored than the less affluent strata. Money whitens inthese societies, in that those darker-skinned persons who manage to succeedeconomically do not face overt social discrimination, and they and their offspringfrequently marry whites. In general though, the closer the relationship to Euro-pean stock, the more apt a population cohort is to have a high income level, land,and education; the closer the relationship to indigenous [Indian] or African stock,the more apt the group is to lack land, to have a low income level and littleschooling, and to suffer discrimination in the workplace, in schools, and at siteswhere public services are di~pensed. ~1989 U.S. State Department report statesthat racial minorities suffer from discrimination in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador,Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. In Brazil, where the government denies the exis-tence of prejudice, the report notes that blacks and mulattos receive less incomeand education than whites and encounter discrimination in housing and services. oThe 1980s have exacerbated the conditions of these racial groups as the countrieshave had to reduce public budgets for health and other social services in orderto repay the foreign debt.Ethnic-based antagonisms have severely disrupted many African and Asianpolities. Most of the countries in these two regions are multiethnic societies, manyof which do not even have one numerically dominant ethnic group. Accordingto one study, of the 230 minorities at risk globally, 72 groups were found toinhabit Africa south of the Sahara, forming about 41 percent of the region's totalpopulation and 49 groups were in Asia, estimated to constitute nearly 12 percentof the continent's population.Tensions stemming from this situation add considerably to the task of creatingand maintaining democratic, or at least noncoercive, politics. Not only mustthese countries seek to allocate resources and foster policies seen as equitable bydiverse social strata, they must also find ways of securing the loyalty of ethnicgroupings that constitute sub or embryonic nations whose initial loyalties and

William C . Thiesenhu ssen, Human Rights, Affirm ative Ac tion , and Land Reform s in Latin


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sense of group consciousness, of we versus them, is to themselves rather thanto the nation-state. And since the economic resources of these countries are low,it is not surprising that ethnic conflict often bodes to tear them asunder, toproduce outcomes in which dominant groups and sometimes minorities discrimi-nate against others in the pursuit of access to political power and economic andsocial advantages. lA proper understanding of ethnic politics in the regions of the Third Worldalso requires an examination of the role the colonial powers played in shapinginterethnic relations. Ethnic heterogeneity in the countries of Africa, for example,is often the result of national boundaries drawn by foreign powers, which for themost part ignored tribal cultural patterns in the subjugated societies:The vagaries of European diplomacy and military campaigns, possibly influenced byalliance with local African political forces, determined the boundary outcomes. Aparticular precolonial African s tate might by treaty or alliance, or by calculation ormiscalculation) of adva ntage, assign itself to a given colonial dom ain. How ever, almo stno on e on the Europ ean side cared whether a particular language group was united o rdivided by colonial partition.I3

The need to institutionalize dominance also required counting and classifyingpeoples into discrete, bounded groups whereas before, as Aidan Southall ob-serves, the cultural identities were only interlocking, overlapping, multiple. 14 Inextreme cases, this created new categories of identity, particularly in AnglophoneAfrica. Ethnonyms in East Africa such as Teso, Gisu, Acholi, Kiga, Sukuma,or Luhya would hardly have been encountered at all a century ago.Ethnic relations were also profoundly affected by colonial state policies, whichactively promoted differential treatment of ethnic groups. Over time such policiescreated widespread economic and social disparities between ethnic groups.I6 Cer-tain ethnic groups were selected as collaborators or channels for the transmissionof government patronage. In Sudan, as A. E. A. Abdallah notes, the long-standing feud between the North and the South can be traced, among otherfactors, to the British conception of a future for the South separate from theNorth. Systematic policies of divide-and-rule were instituted, ensuring very little

S . M . Lipset, Racial and Ethnic Tensions in the Third World in W . Scott Tho mp son, ed ., TheThird Wo rld: Premises of U S Policy (San Francisco: Institute of Contemporary Studies, 1978),123-148.' rawford You ng, Patterns of Social Con flict: State, Class, and Ethnicity, Daedalus(Spring 1982): 75.l 4 Aidan Southall, The Illusion of Tribe, Journal of Asian andAfrica n Studies 5 (January-April

1970): 36.s Youn g, Patterns of Social Conflict, 79.

l 6 Michael L. Wyzan, Introduction in Wyzan , ed ., The Political Econom y; Neil Nevitte andCharles H. Kennedy, The Analysis of Policies of Ethnic Preference in Developing States in Nevitte


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interaction between ethnic groups. Economic development in the South wasneglected. During negotiations over independence, Southerners were not includedin the discussions, prompting the creation of a southern Sudanese political move-ment. Other examples include the British preference for northern Nigerians inNigeria and Tamils in Sri Lanka. The British also pursued different policiestoward Malays and non-Malays in Malaysia. The Malays were accorded a specialposition when land rights were granted to them, and a separate college wasgranted for their aristocratic sons, who were later recruited into public servicepositions.18 After independence the system of quotas and privileged access wascontinued, creating severe ethnic conflicts. As Neil Nevitte and Charles Kennedynote, the selection of one group over others n effect constituted an incipientpolicy of preference during the colonial phase, Ig setting a precedent for ethnicpreference policies in the post-colonial period.Modernization under colonialism also exacerbated interethnic tensions as itwidened ethnic group disparities. It upset traditional relationships betweengroups as some groups more than others were able to utilize the opportunities forsocial mobility.'O

Asia and Africa are ethnically more heterogeneous than Europe, because muchof Europe's nationality problem was solved by wars and population transfersover the span of several centuries. Nationalism, an ideological movement forself-determination, emerged with the French revolution and spread over thewhole of Europe. As Walker Connor has pointed out, the dogma that alienrule is illegitimate rule proved to be a potent challenge to the legitimacy ofmultinational structures and ultimately led to their di~integration.'~The peace settlements that followed World War I brought about an extensiveredrawing of boundaries in favor of ethnically homogenous nations leading toa decrease in the percentage of population belonging to ethnic peoples withouta state or self-government -by one count, from about 26 percent in 1910 to onlyabout percent in 1930.'' Adjustments after World War I1 further reduced theproblem of ethnic minorities throughout Europe. Both benign (assimilation,voluntary, or otherwise) and brutal methods (forcible transfer of population and

A . E . A . Abdallah, Ethnic Conflict in Sudan in Wyzan, ed ., The Political Ec onom y 145.l 8 Horowtiz, Ethnic Grou ps; Michael L . Wyzan, Ethnic Relations and the New Econom ic Pol icy

in Malaysia in Wyzan, ed ., The Political Economy.l Nevitte and Kennedy, The Analysis of Policies, 10.

Youn g, Patterns of Social Conflic t. Als o see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups.Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism in the First World: The Present in Historical Perspective


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RACIAL AND ETHNIC CONFLICTS 591

genocide were used to achieve the nationalist principle. Jaroslav Krejci andVitezslav Velimsky estimate that about 20 million people moved and permanentlysettled in new homelands.23The changes in the ethnopolitical relationships over a century and a half arestriking.

In 1820more tha n half the population of Eu rope belonged to ethnic nations who eitherlacked a territorial political status of their own (state or autonomy) or [who] werescattered amongs t several dynastic states uninterested in their national aspirations . By1920 the share of such ethnic groups (whole nations or their fragments) declined toabout 7 percent. As result of the Second World War, the share of ethnic minoritieswithout an autonomy status dropped to percent only.24

However, as the prevalence of numerous ethnic movements in Western Europeillustrate, not all ethnic aspirations were satisfied. Especially notable are theproblems in the United Kingdom with Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales;in Spain with the Basques and Catalans; and in France with Bretons, Corsicans,and also with the Basques. While such ethnonational aspirations continue todominate the political arena, new sources of interethnic conflict have alsoemerged in Europe. One has to do with the rise in the guest-worker and immigrantpopulations in Western Europe and the other with the breakdown of Soviet andYugoslav polities.The large scale migration of guest-workers who come from countries notsharing the predominant cultures or language has created new ethnic tensions inWestern Europe. They constitute about 5 to 15 percent of the total populationof most Western European countries.25 Over half of the foreign workers andtheir dependents are located in France, Switzerland, and West Germany. Risingunemployment in host countries has heightened tensions between the local andforeign populations, particularly in Germany, where the problem has reachedexplosive levels. Racist attacks on foreign workers occur every day in the countrywith over 6 attacks reported in one year, 1989 Fully half of these attacks havetaken place in western Germany, although the reincorporated eastern section isnow the center of the most vicious ones. There is increased support for extremeright-wing political groups campaigning on Innti-immigrant platf~rms.~~France, the National Front Party has increased its standing by basing its cam-paigns on fears about North African immigration.In Britain, the dissolution of the empire created an inflow of migrants fromformer colonies. The country now has immigrants from diverse religious, lan-

3 Ibid., 64.Ibid., 69-70.5 Mark J. Miller, Foreign W orkers in Western Europe An Emerging Political Force (New York:Praeger, 1981).


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guage, and regional backgrounds. There are, for example, about one millionMuslims who have migrated from South Asia and Middle Eastern countries. Inrecent years they have become organized, insisting that they be subject to Islamicrather than British family law.

The dismemberment of the last of the great multinational empires also threatensto create chaos and disorder in Eastern Europe and beyond. Starting with theconquest of Kazan in 1552, the growth of the Russian empire took place over 360years.27As a result of this expansion, the empire dominated over people fromseveral different language, religious, and ethnic background^.^' During this pe-riod Russian treatment of the minorities changed frequently from tolerance toforced assimilation and discrimination. By the late nineteenth century, Ortho-doxy had become the state religion. Other non-Christian and non-Orthodoxreligions were discriminated against, particularly if their spiritual centers werelocated outside the territory of the empire like the Catholic and Muslim faiths.29Before the revolution, conversion to Orthodoxy was the chief means for assimi-lating minorities. Later, Marxism became the instrument of fusion. The originalMarxist theory considered ethnic minorities an unnecessary distraction, if notinhibitors, to economic and political progress. Classic Marxist reasoning justifiedhistorically the ethnic domination over economically less productive peoples bydeveloped groups because it was considered to be a historically useful mission:the integration of less productive cultures such as Mexicans, Algerians, andAsian Indians -into industrially advanced ones helped to produce capitalism instable agrarian societies. As Carlos Moore points out, Marx's systematic condem-nation of inferior races included a belief that their nationalist movementscould easily become obstacles for agrarian societies in the process of becomingindu~trialized.~~o Marx and Engels the struggles of the then politically op-

Alexander Bennigsen, Soviet Minority Nationalism in Historical Perspective in Rob ert Con-quest, ed., The Last Em pire: Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford, CA: Hoover InstitutionPress, 1986), 133.The 1979 Census identified 104 nationalities. Prio r t o its dissolution, ethnic Rusians had ceasedto fo rm the majo rity of Soviet Union's po pulation. By one estimate Russians probab ly did not exceed48.5 percent of the Soviet popu lation. See Mikhail S. Bern stam, The Demography of So viet EthnicGr oup s in World Perspective in Conq uest, ed., The Last Em pire 320. In the USSR one was requiredto choose an official nationality at the age of 16, (Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds.,Ethnicity: Theory and Experience [Cambridge, MA: H arvard University Press, 19751, 17). Becausechoosing Russian as a nation ality had long-lasting economic and political benefits, it is estimated thatfour million people reidentified themselves as Russians in the census of 1979.

9 Bennigsen, Soviet Minority Nationalism. 136. For m ore information abo ut the Russian em-pire's treatment of minorities also see V . Kozlov, The Peoples of Soviet Union (Bloomington, IN:


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pressed blacks, Asians, Slavs, and Latins were distractions from the real issueof class ~truggle.~'Marx and Engels lashed out against Bohemia and Croatia for seeking freedomfrom German (Austrian) imperialism. Writing about the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Engels recognized three of its peoples as destined for a pro-gressive role-Germans, Poles, and Magyars. Then, in an unfortunate turn ofphrase, he emphasized the chief vocation of all the other races and peoples, greatand small, is to perish in the revolutionary holo~aus t . ~~On the formal ideological level, the communist regimes that had come to powersince 9 7 rejected Marx's and Engel's idea of absorbing minority and backwardpeoples into the cultures of more advanced societies. Lenin proposed that nationalminorities in the Soviet Union should have as much autonomy as possible andthe right to secede. Lenin suffered a disabling stroke before he could elaborateon the nationality policy. When Stalin came to power, he ignored Lenins' viewson this Although he claimed to support the development of culturesthat were national in form, socialist in content, under his rule the rights of thenational minorities, guaranteed under the Soviet constitution, were frequentlyviolated.While the nationalism of the majority with its state-building and unifying potentialwas treated with empathy, the nationalisms of the minorities were considereddivisive and, therefore, ~uppressed.~~he republics were subjected to brutal,colonial Russification. Linguistic and cultural assimilation were promoted throughRussian schools. Whole ethnic groups were deported- the Tatars of the Crimea,the Germans of the Volga, the Chechentsy of the Cauca~us.~'error managedto keep the lid on ethnic aspirations for several decades. Under Nikita Khrushchevand Leonid Brezhnev, Stalin's nationality policy was implicitly dropped. Thelive-and-let-live practices placated many officials of non-Russian ethnic groups.Lobbies representing native interests became increasingly entren~hed. ~~

The advent of glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed movements forsecession. The Union of Soviet Republics is dead and the fourteen non-Russianrepublics are now independent, although most have joined a loose common-wealth. However, since many of the republics contain ethnic minorities, indepen-dence has not ended ethnic tensions in the region.

3 Lipset, Racial and Ethnic Tensions , 138.3 Quoted in Helen d'Encausse and Stuart Schram, Marxism and Asia (London: Allen LanePenguin Press, 1969), 10.

Teodar Shanin, Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies,Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (July 1989): 409 -424; Martha B. Olcott, OfficialSoviet Policy and the 'National Problem' in Olcott, ed., The Soviet Multinational State Readingsand Documents (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990).


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594 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

Ethnic problems have reached explosive levels in other previously socialist coun-tries of Europe, particularly the former Yugoslavia. No single group formed amajority within it, although Serbian influence tended to predominate. Four ofthe country s republics have so far declared independence (Slovenia, Croatia,Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia). Croatia s declaration in June 1991sparked an uprising by the republic s minority Serbs, who constitute aboutpercent of Croatia s population. Serbian insurgents have since seized about one-third of the territory of Croatia and about two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegov-ina, with help from the Republic of Serbia and the Serb-dominated federalarmy.Czechs and Slovaks have agreed to partition the former Czechoslovakia in-to its respective parts; the Hungarian minority in Romania faces discrimina-tion, as does the one-million Turkish minority in Bulgaria, who until recentlywas not allowed to keep Turkish names, speak its language, or practice its Mus-lim faith; and there is an increased persecution in Eastern Europe against Jewsand Gypsies and other foreigners, such as refugees from the former Yugo-slavia.The resurgence of ethnicity worldwide raises several important questions. Whatfactors explain the timing and nature of modern ethnic conflicts? Why do somecases of interethnic contact generate conflict and others do not? For instance,while the presence of many foreigners has created ethnic tensions in France andGermany, in Luxembourg and Sweden large numbers of immigrants have resultedin only a few cases of interethnic hostility. Luxembourg has the largest proportionof semisettled aliens in Europe (out of 370,000 people, 100,000 are foreigners,most of whom are culturally and racially different from the 10cals.)~ Similarly,Sweden in recent decades has incorporated more than 400 000foreign-born immi-grants without much difficulty. In the developing world, Tanzania has a largenumber of relatively small tribal groups but little intertribal ~onflict.~n societieswhere ethnic tensions are high, what can be done to minimize these conflicts?How have countries like Switzerland or Papua New Guinea (with 700 differentlanguage groups) managed relatively peaceful ethnic relations in a culturallyheterogeneous en~i ronment?~~hat is the consequence of ethnic fragmentationfor the stability of nation-states? Is the next century going to witness a Balkaniza-tion of large states or will the move be in the other direction toward integrationof ethnic units into suprastate governments? Will it be a world of ECs (European

37 Ma rtin Heisler, Ethnicity and Ethn ic Relations in the Mo dern West in Josep h V . Mont-ville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Toronto: Lexington Books, 1990 ,22 .


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R CI L ND ETHNIC CONFLICTS 9

Communities), OASs (Organizations of American States), ASEANs (Associationof South East Asian Nations), UNs (United Nations), or one of Latvias, Croatias,Kashmirs, and Eritreas?

Contrary to the expectations of many Marxist and non-Marxist scholars, theprocess of modernization itself brought about an increase in ethnic consciousness.As Connor has pointed out, while the notion of popular sovereignty legitimateddemands for national self-determination, modernization acted as a catalyst forethnonationally inspired demands. In Europe, prior to World War 11, when therewere fewer roads and cars, local radio rather than state-wide television wasin operation, and income and education levels were much lower than today.Brittany's culture appeared safe from French encroachment. . . . [Mlost Wal-loons and Flemings seldom came into contact . . . with members of the otherWith substantial increases in communication and intergroup contactthe divisive sense of ethnonational uniqueness has been reinforced rather thandissipated.Most theories of ethnic mobilization assume that modernization has played animportant role in stimulating the ethnic movements of recent times. They divergein the factors they identify as causally more significant in the development andpersistence of ethnically based movements. Thus Michael Hechter, puzzled withthe rise of nationalist movements in the industrialized West, argues that capitalistforms of development create economic disparities between core and peripheralregions and produce . . . a cultural division of labor: a system of stratificationwhere objective cultural distinctions are superimposed upon class lines. Highstatus occupations tend to be reserved for those of metropolitan culture; whilethose of indigenous culture cluster at the bottom of the stratification ~ystem. ~'This type of a stratification system ultimately gives rise to nationalist movementsin the periphery. However, the evidence of stronger nationalist movements inrelatively prosperous, peripheral regions of some countries, like Quebec, theBasque region, Catalonia, Flanders, and to a lesser extent, Estonia and Slovenia,casts serious doubts on Hechter's internal colonial thesis.42A model of ethnic mobilization that has enjoyed much popularity in recentyears is economic competition. The basic arguments are derived from the ecolog-

4 Conno r, Ethnonationalism in the First Wo rld, 330-331.4 Michael Heche r, Internal Colonialism: The CelticFringe in British National D evelopmen t 1536-1966 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 30.42 Anthony D . Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,

1981); Ken Medurst, Basques and Basque Nationalism in Colin H . Williams, ed., National Sepa-


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596 POLITIC L SCIENCE QU RTERLY

ical theories of Frederick Barth and his associates43 nd Michael Hannan.44Pro-ponents of the economic competition model argue that modernization increaseslevels of competition for jobs, housing, and other valued resources among ethnicgroups and that ethnic conflict and social movemen ts based on ethnic (ratherthan some other) boundaries occur when ethnic com petition increase^. ^^ Stud-ies using this approach have found that ethnic party support is much higherin developed, urbanized, and industrial regions than in underdeveloped ones.46Development leads to a rise rather than a decline in ethnic mobilization, becauseit provides resources to ethnic groups in the periphery, increasing their bargainingposition and organizational capacity for action. The literature on the class basisof ethnic movements is also supportive of the theory, for it shows that movementactivists tend to be more educated, are more well-to-do, and have higher occupa-tional status than others among their ethnic gro~ps.~'The economic competition model has also been applied to explain the rise ofnational consciousness in the Ukraine. In a book written before the ethnic turmoilof the Gorbachev era, Bohdan Krawchenko notes the question of competitionis crucial in explaining the rise of national consciousness in Ukraine followingthe economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. With mobilized individuals, expec-tations race ahead of the real possibilities. These were the same people who hadto compete with Russians for employment, and the rivalry led to an exacerbationof ethnic tensions. 48Similarly, Teodar Shanin in a more recent article implies that economic growthin the Soviet Union's ethnic peripheries created more opportunity to amass indi-vidual fortunes, both legally and through corruption. All this facilitated the

4 Frederick Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).Michael T. H anna n, "The Dynamics of Ethnic Boundaries in Mode rn States" in J. Meyer andM. T. Hanna n, eds., National Developm ent and the W orld System (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1979), 253-275.45 Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel, "Introduction" in Olzak and Nagel, eds., Com petitive EthnicRelations (Boston: Academic Press, 1986), 2. (Emphasis in original.)6 Susan Olzak, "Ethnic Mobilization in Quebec," Ethnic and Racial Studies 5 (July 1982): 253-297; Eric Leifer, "C ompeting Models of Politica l Mobilization: T he Role of Ethnic Ties," AmericanJournal of Sociology 87 (July 1981): 23-47; Fran cois Nielsen, "The F lemish Movem ent in BelgiumAfter World War 11: A Dynamic Analysis," American Sociological Review 45 (February 1980): 76-94; Charles Ragin, "E thnic P olitical Mobilization: T he Welsh Case," American Sociological Review44 (August 1979): 619-635.47 William R. Beer, "The Social Class of Ethn ic Activists in Con temp orary France " in Esma n, ed.,Ethnic Conflict; William R. Beer, The Unex pected Rebellion: Ethnic Activism in Contem poraryFrance (New York: New York University Press, 1980); Maurice Pinar d an d Richard Ham ilton, "The

Parti Quebecois Comes to Pow er: A n A nalysis of the 1976 Quebec Election," Canadian Journal ofPoliticalScience 11 (Decem ber 1978): 739-775; Ragin, "Ethnic Political Mobilization"; Nielsen, "TheFlemish Movement"; Olzak, "Ethnic Mobilization in Quebec"; S. M. Lipset, "The Revolt AgainstModernity" in Per Torsvik, ed., Mob ilization, Center-Periphery Structures and N ation B uilding


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formation of ethnic lobbies in the post-Stalin era. Industrialization and urbaniza-tion led to an increase in the number of local non-Russian cadres and intelligentsiawho had to compete with the Russian workers. As a result nationalist tensionswere building up. 49The economic competition model is, however, not without its weaknesses.First, as Sarah Belanger and Maurice Pinard point out, theories with this perspec-tive fail to compare countries experiencing conflict with others experiencingaccomrnodati~n. ~~hey cannot explain why Switzerland, a highly developedcountry, has little ethnic tension between the French and German-speaking Swiss,although the competition between these two groups should be very high as theirsocioeconomic positions are equal. It also cannot explain the escalation of ethnicconflict in Sri Lanka and its decline in Malaysia. Cases like these bring up themost prominent defect in all models of ethnic processes that focus primarily oneconomic explanations-their neglect of political variable^.^' In many ethnicmovements, institutional structures and state policies play a major role in shapingand conditioning the emergence of such movements.In the case of Ukrainian dissent, for example, Alexander Motyl argues that therise of nationalist sentiments in the pre-glasnost era was primarily the productof political circumstances, foremost of them being Khrushchev's de-Stalinizationand Brezhnev's partial re-Stalinization of Soviet state and society.s2Others havesimilarly observed that by implementing policies that recognized and institution-alized ethnic differences- creating administrative units along national lines,giving national languages official status, and recruiting local political elites fromthe indigenous populations - the Soviet authorities unwittingly helped to estab-lish the infrastructure for nationalism during the post-Stalinist era.53The cases of Switzerland, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia also illustrate that specificpolitical mechanisms chosen to regulate ethnic conflict can often affect the likeli-hood and intensity of such conflicts. Before the nineteenth century the relationsamong the three major language groups in Switzerland (German, French, andItalian) were characterized by conflict.54 f ethnic tension is now muted, this maybe because the Swiss have a political system that has institutionalized ethnicpluralism, allowing each of the three major language groups proportional equiva-

49 Shan in, Ethnicity in the Soviet Union, 420.5 Sarah Belanger and Maurice Pina rd, Ethnic Movements and the Competition Model, WorkingPapers on Social Behavior (Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal, 1989), 7.5 For an attem pt to introduce political variables into an ethnic competition model see F ra n ~ o is

Nielsen, Struc tural Conduciveness and Ethn ic Mob ilization: T he Flemish Movem ent in Belgiumin Olzak and Nagel, eds., Competitive Ethnic Relations 173-198.5Z Alexander J Motyl, Will the Non-R ussians Rebel? State Ethnicity and Stability in the USSR(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).


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598 POLITIC L SCIENCE QUARTERLY

lence in power sharing extending from the Federal Council to the bureaucracyand the armed forces.Before the period of ethnic violence began in Sri Lanka, interethnic relationsappeared far more tolerant there than in Malaysia. Malaysia has so far succeededwhere Sri Lanka failed, partly because of the differences in political structures.In Malaysia, these structures provided incentives for parties to seek multiethnicbases.j6 Malaysia has a simple majority voting system, and voting districts aredrawn so that no ethnic group has a majority. In contrast, in most of the votingdistricts of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese have an automatic majority so that theirparties do not need to seek Tamil support. Incentives to form interethnic coali-tions are now also built into the Sri Lankan electoral arrangements, but as DonaldHorowitz argues, in the formative period of Sinhalese exclusiveness and Tamilseparatism, all of the incentives were the otherThe political system, however, not only responds to existing ethnic differencesbut often creates new ethnic groups out of extant, unorganized ethnoculturalcategories, and [promotes] ethnic awareness and action among formerlymobilized, recently inactive, ethnic It does so in several different ways.First, the expansion of political authority over a long list of functions creates acompetitive arena for distribution of state resources; moreover, in developingcountries the state itself is a resource over which ethnic groups engage in acontinuous str~ggle.~~econd, when the state's administrative structures andlegal institutions distribute resources based on ethnicity, they further encouragepolitical mobilization linked to ethnic differences.@Scheduled Castes, a histori-

Jur g Steiner, Power-sharing: Ano ther Swiss 'Export Product'? in Montville, ed ., Conflict andPeacemaking, 107-1 14.6 Don ald Ho row tiz, Ethnic Conflict Managem ent for Policymakers in Montville, ed., Conflictand Peacemaking, 115-130.7 Donald Horowitz, Making Moderation Pay: The Comparative Politics of Ethnic ConflictManagem ent in Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking, 465. In presidential elections now theentire country has become one large heterogeneous constituency and Sinhalese divisions make itlikely tha t the election will be decided on second preferences, including Ta mil second preferences.In parliam entary elections the change was mad e from first-past-the-post in mostly single-memberconstituencies to a party list sytem of proportional representation in multimember constituencies.According to Horowitz these changes in the electoral system came too late to foster interethnicaccommodation (ibid., 463, 465).

J Joa ne Nagel, The Ethnic Revolution: Emergence of Ethn ic Nationalism in Leo Driedger, ed.,Ethnic Canada: Identities and Inequalities (Toronto: Cop p Clark Pitman , 1987), 40.9 Daniel Bell, Ethnicity an d Social Change in N. Glazer and D. P. Moyn ihan, eds., Ethnicity:Theory andExperience (Cam bridg e, MA: H arvard U niversity Press, 1975), 141-166; Anth ony S mith ,

The Diffusion of Nationalism: Some Historical and Sociological Perspectives, British Journalof Sociology 29 (Jun e 1978): 234-48; An thon y Sm ith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge, England:Cam bridg euni versity Press, 1981); Pau l R. Brass, Ethnic Groupsand theSta te Totaw a,NJ: Barnesan d Noble Books, 1985); Young, Pattern s of Social Conflict.


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cally disadvantaged group in India, has been given special encouragement forpolitical participation and other benefits in education and government service.Although they are diverse culturally, linguistically, and geographically, suchbenefits have created a common sense of identity and increased their politicalm~bilization.~'In the United States, where the preference for individual rights as opposed togroup rights made demands based on ethnicity less legitimate, in recent yearsaffirmative action policies have legitimized and encouraged such claims. A studyof Latino mobilization in the city of Chicago found that affirmative action policyprovided the critical base for the organizational development and growth of aLatino identity and agenda.62Census categories have facilitated this process by redrawing ethnic boundaries.For example, the U.S. census puts diverse ethnic groups like Koreans, Chinese,Japanese, and Asian Indians under the broader category of Asian and PacificIslanders. Similarly, since 1980 Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and otherSpanish speaking groups have been classified as Hispanics. Because the govern-ment uses these artificial categories as units in allocating political and economicresources, over time such diverse groups begin to act collectively as they seethemselves sharing common interests and experiences of oppression and alsobenefits.'j3 As William Petersen has argued, few things facilitate a category tocoalesce into a group as readily as its designation as such by an official body.64Third, the state, for its own administrative convenience and in order to improvecontrol over local elites, may select certain ethnic elites and organizations ascollaborators or channels for the transmission of government patronage. Thissituation is common in many colonized countries (British preference for Tamils inSri Lanka and Sikhs in India) and now also frequently occurs in many developingcountries engaged in the task of nation-building, thereby affecting the identityand political mobilization of particular ethnic The late Indian PrimeMinister Rajiv Gandhi, in order to undermine the ruling Communist party inWest Bengal, expressed his sympathy for the demand of the Nepalis to form aseparate state in the northern part of West Bengal.Fourth, ethnic processes are also often shaped by state policies with regard to

6 Rita Jalali, Preferential Policies and Th e Movement of The Disadvantaged: The Case of theScheduled Caste in India, Ethnic and Racial Studies (forthcoming issue).6 Felix and Padilla, Latino Ethnicity in the City of Chicago in Olzak and Nagel, eds., Competi-tive Ethnic Relations 153-172.Enloe, The Gro wth of the State, 123-136; Espiritu, The Census and Ethnic Enum eration:

Playing the Numbers Game (Paper presented at the 84th Annual M eeting of the American Sociolog-ical Association, San Francisco, 9-13 August 1989).William Petersen, Politics and the Measurement of Ethnicity in William Alonso and PaulStarr , eds., The Politics o f N umbers (New York: R ussell Sage Fou ndatio n, 1986), 187-234.


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military recruitment. Military and police forces are rarely neutral actors in ethnicconflicts. They are typically ethnically imbalanced as a result of both historicalsocioeconomic maldistribution of opportunities and of deliberate recruitmentstrategies pursued by central govern men tali tie^. ^^ Thus, Yugoslavia's army,whose officer corps is 85 percent Serbian, has openly supported Serb guerrillasin the civil war in Croatia.Given the variety of ethnic conflicts and their dynamic and fluid qualities, noone factor can provide a comprehensive explanation. What has been clearlyestablished, however, is that ethnicity derives its strength not only from thesymbolic and affective aspects of primordial ties but also from its use as aninstrument for economic and political ad~antage.~~

The proposition that no nation in the world is free from some form of violationof human rights in the form of ethnic, religious, or racial discrimination (unlessit is one of the few totally homogeneous in these terms, such as Iceland) is by nowaccepted as a fact. Much more often than not, people resist and resent thosewho differ from themselves in race, culture, and religion. Many have sought toinstitutionalize privileges for members of their groups. In modern times, bothrulers and the masses have turned to virulent expressions of bigotry in responseto social tensions, to threats perceived by those in power, and to insecuritystemming from economic or status uncertainty. The most extreme racist effort,the Holocaust of European Jewry, occurred in modern times. Anti-Semitism wasalso the policy of some communist states which, like the former Soviet Union,restricted the rights of Jewish citizens. Racism still prevails in many Africanstates, where the politics of ethnicity continue to determine who rules. Ugandaeliminated East Indian minorities, among others.The white-dominated society of South Africa began to dismantle its segregationand other discrimination policies against the majority black population only afterinternational pressure was brought to bear on it. Ethnic divisions have alsoundermined the apparent unity of countries as diverse as Belgium, Canada, the

Cyn thia Enlo e, Police an d Military in the Resolution of Ethn ic Conflict, The Annals of theAmerican Ac adem y of Political and Social Science 433 (1977): 137; also see W . L . Young, Minoritiesand the Military: A Cross-National Study in World Perspective (Madison: U niversity of WisconsinPress, 1982).7 For exam ple, the decision of the Ind ian governm ent to have elections in 1983 changed the

Assamese movement from a language-based unity that was supposed to be shared by Hindu andMuslim members of the same speech commun ity to a m ovement that excluded many Muslim speakersof the language o n the gro unds that they were illegal imm igrants from neighboring Bangladesh. (SeeDas Gu pta, India; Democratic Becoming and Comb ined Development, 241). In Eritrea, as Ted


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United Kingdom, Spain, Cyprus, Pakistan, Malaysia, Lebanon, Nigeria, andZaire.What steps have proved effective in containing these divisive forces? How hasethnic conflict been managed in multiethnic polities? Some scholars have arguedthat consociational democracies provide a model of conflict management forsegmented societies. In such democracies the political leaders of the major subcul-tures cooperate in a grand coalition to govern the country. 68 Such coalitionshave been successfully formed in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzer-land.Dependence on elite conciliation makes consociationalism less effective inThird World c ~ u n t r i e s . ~ ~ederalism, on the other hand, has proved to be a usefuldevice to reduce ethnic conflicts in many countries from economically advancedcountries like Switzerland to developing ones like India. Federalism works be-cause it transfers the target of political mobilization from the national to theprovincial centers, shifts conflicts in homogenous provinces to intraethnic divi-sions, and gives ethnic groups local autonomy. Papua New Guinea managed toresolve its most serious conflict arising out of secessionist-based demands bydecentralization of power and the establishment of nineteen provincial govern-m e n t ~ . ~ ~For federalism to work, however, it must be properly balanced with the patternof ethnic cleavages. In Nigeria, the original division of the country in 196 intothree tribally distinctive regions with their own parliaments, police forces, uni-versities, and budgets derived from local revenues-failed to prevent serioustribal conflict. By creating a nineteen-state federal structure, Nigeria's SecondRepublic crosscut ethnicity to some extent and dispersed the stakes in electoralc~mpetition.~'In India, a federal system gives control over cultural, educational, and lin-guistic policies to state governments whose boundary lines were drawn largely tocorrespond to ethnic variations in response to collective protest. But federalismalso works in India because the social system is highly segmented, enablingthe center to intervene in crisis situation in individual states without necessarily

Th e other three basic elements of consociational democracy according to Lijphart a re (1) themu tual veto or 'concurrent ma jority rule,' which serves as an additional pro tection of vital minorityinterests, (2) prop ortion ality as the principal sta nd ard of political represe ntation , civil service appo int-ment, and allocation of public funds, and (3) a high degree of autonomy for each segment to runits own internal affairs. Arend Lijphar t, Dem ocracy in PluralSocieties A Comparative Exploration(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 25.9 Horow itz, Ethnic Conflict Managem ent, 115-130.7 David M. Lipset, Pap ua New Guinea: the Melanisian Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism inLarry Diamond, J Linz, and S. M. Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries Asia 111(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989), 383-422.


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creating a national Electoral reforms (like heterogenous constituenciesand incentives to pool votes across ethnic lines) that force ethnic parties to formcoalitions with rival groups are also techniques that help to maintain peace be-tween ethnic groups as the earlier discussion of Malaysia and Sri Lanka illus-trated. In India, ethnically based parties have difficulty winning elections atthe national level because many of the country's electoral constituencies areheterogenous. The key, as Donald Horowitz notes, is to have institutional ar-rangements that provide political incentives for accommodation and that penalizeextremism.73Secession or partition is rarely an adequate solution, because most regions ofa country are ethnically heterogenous and partition can involve a costly processof exchanging populations and dividing land and natural resources, often re-sulting in loss of many human lives and continuing border conflicts. The partitionof British India illustrated that separation can lead to an orgy of interethnicviolence, even when carried out under peaceful conditions. Secession also intro-duces ethnic problems in a sharper form on a narrower scale, with smaller andsmaller nationalisms oppressing smaller and smaller minori t ie~. ~~erbs in anindependent Croatia, as Mihajlo Mihajlov points out, would be an even morevulnerable minority than Croats in Yugoslavia. The problem is further compli-cated by the fluid quality of ethnic identities. When Pakistan was founded, theMuslim religion formed the base of ethnic solidarity that united Muslims in theeastern regions with those in the western parts. Several decades later the easternregion demanded and secured a separate state, Bangladesh, on grounds of lan-guage discrimination. Now the Pakistan government faces secessionist demandsfrom Pathans and Baluchs.In the former Soviet Union, where deportations, industrialization, and Mos-cow's settlement policies made most republics ethnically mixed, secession andindependence may not be the solution to the ethnic problems. The ethnic andnational groups in the Soviet Union were not always confined to the titularpolitical administrative unit. Nor was the titular nationality necessarily a majorityin its administrative unit, a fact that creates major tensions in the newly indepen-dent republics. 5In Georgia, the first non-Baltic Soviet republic to formally declare indepen-dence, 30 percent of the population belong to a wide variety of minorities. Inrecent years conflicts have developed with Abkazians and O~s e t i a n s . ~~he disputewith the Ossetian minority has often turned violent. In 1990, the Georgian legisla-

l Myron Weiner, The Indian Paradox (Newbury Pa rk, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), 36.7 Horow itz, Making Moderation Pay.7 Mihajlo Mihajlov, Can Yugoslavia Survive, Journal of Democracy 2 (Spring 1991): 90.l In two out of fifteen republics the nationals form less than 50 percent of the population; in


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ture formally declared an end to the longstanding local autonomy of SouthOssetia after the Ossetian assembly voted to remain part of the former SovietUnion.In the Moldavian republic (where only 64 percent of the population is Mol-davian), the Turkic-speaking Gagauz proclaimed independence, claiming theywere being discriminated against by the Romanian speaking Moldavian majority.In Azerbaijan, Armenians want the Nagorna-Karabakh region to be united withArmenia. Since some of these republics are now under the control of authoritarianleaders, minorities are likely to encounter further repression.The independence of the Baltic republics could not result in a clean ethnicbreak. With Moscow's encouragement many Russians settled in the Baltic areas,altering their ethnic makeup. Russian minorities usually occupied a dispropor-tionate number of the better jobs and housing, creating resentment among theindigenous population. In Estonia, 61 percent of the population is Estonian. InLatvia, only 5 percent of the population is Lat~ian.'~Except for Slovenia in the northwest, most republics in the former Yugoslaviaare ethnically mixed. Over a third of all Serbs and percent of all Croatians liveoutside their republics. Even if the Croatian republic is able to resolve the disputewith its Serbian minorities, the problem of the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovinalooks insoluble. This republic is 40 percent Muslim, 3 percent Serbian, and 8percent Croatian. Since it lies between Serbia and Croatia, both lay claims toportions of it and there is no way to partition it. 78Many countries have adopted preferential or affirmative action policies toreduce ethnic conflict arising out of economic disparities between groups. Prefer-ences are granted most often in education, employment, and land. Malaysia,Fiji, and Indonesia have policies that favor their indigenous populations. Manynations in Africa have adopted regional equalization, policies which in realityfavor the ethnic groups concentrated in some regions and not others (some exam-ples are Zaire, Tanzania, and Nigeria). India has fixed quotas in education andcivil service and reserved seats in the legislature for Scheduled Castes and Tribes,who together form percent of the population. Many Indian states have alsoextended preferential treatment to other lower status castes and to the indigenouspopulations.Preferential programs are sometimes instituted by politically dominant groupsagainst another ethnic group usually an immigrant minority which holds adisproportionate share of economic power. Preferential policies in such casesare designed to enhance the economic position of those who govern the polity.Currently, this pattern exists in Malaysia, Indonesia, Fiji, Sri Lanka, severalAfrican countries, and many states in India.

In some countries, preferential policies have been instituted by the ethnicgroups in power for the benefit of historically disadvantaged minority groups.


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The most notable cases are India's preferential programs for the Scheduled Castesand Tribes mentioned earlier and the affirmative action quota programs forblacks in the United States. Other examples, all from democratic countries,include benefits for Maoris in New Zealand, aborigines in Australia, Sephardimin Israel, and some minority groups in Canada.In countries like Malaysia, India, and the United States such policies have beenvigorously pursued and have provided educational and job opportunities to somein the targeted gro~ps.'~owever, such policies have also created a wave ofresentment among the privileged groups. It is easier to measure progress towardsinterethnic equality than it is to assess improvements in ethnic harmony. Havepreferential policies accentuated ethnic conflict or have they helped to reduce it?While sweeping statements on this issue are abundant, more studies are neededto carefully evaluate the policies' impact on interethnic relations before a definiteanswer can be reached.80Is democracy viable in a multiethnic society? There is plenty of evidence fromAfrican and Asian countries that demonstrates that intense ethnic loyalties en-danger democracy. Yet many ethnically heterogenous societies have succeededin managing conflict within a democratic framework. Ethnic cleavages do notnecessarily lead to violence. Indeed, one could argue that they can be a sourceof democratic strength and renewal, for ethnic peace may require greater decen-tralization, distribution, rotation, and representation of power than authori-tarian regimes have been able to pr~vide. ~ ' asipula Sithole notes that theheterogeneity of the Zimbabwean social milieu is one factor that has helped tosustain pluralist democracy in that country. In a real sense, continued Ndebele[tribal] support for Nkomo's ZAPU [opposition] has slowed down ZANU's [gov-ernment party] speed toward countryside hegemony and the one-party state. 82

l For Malaysia see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in C onflic t. Also see Milton Esman, Ethnic Politicsand Economic Power, Compa rative Politics 19 (July 1987): 395-418. F or In dia see Jalali, Preferen-tial Policies and the Movem ent of the Disadvantaged. Fo r the United States see Lawrence Fuchs,The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity and the Civic Culture (Middletown, CT: WesleyanUniversity Press, 1990).Horowitz's comparative study of such policies in developing countries concludes that in thesho rt run preferential policies tend t o accen tuate ethnic conflict (see his Ethnic Groups in Confl ict .On the other hand, Fuchs in a book that examines race relations in the United States reports thatafte r several years of affirmativ e action program s whites who worked directly with blacks weresignificantly freer of prejudice tha n those who did n ot . Overall, the percentage of whites who indicatedstrong personal antagonisms to having black neighbors dropped from 47 to 14 between 1963 and1978, and the percentage of those who said they were either already living in proximity to blackneighbors or would have no objection to doing so rose from 36 to 60 percent. See Fuchs, TheAmerican Kaleidoscope, 444. Also see Seymou r Martin Lipset, Equal C hances Versus Equ al Re-sults, The Annals of the American Academ y of Political and Social Science 523 (September 1992):63-74.Larry Diamond , Ju an J . Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Dem ocracyin Developing Countries:


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Similarly in Nigeria, Larry Diamond argues that although democratic stabilityhas often been threatened by ethnic divisions, authoritarian systems also havebeen hamstrung in managing ethnic conflict^.'^As a comparative study of the democratic experience in twenty-six developingnations concludes, when ethnic leaders are allowed to share power, they gener-ally act according to the rules of the game, but when the state responds to ethnicmobilization with exclusion and repression, violence festers. s4 Indeed, the factthat interethnic relations are more peaceful in the West than in the Third Worlddoes not result from differences in ethnic groups in the different regions. Thedifferences appear to rest in the nature of the western political structures, whichhave incorporated multiple ethnic expressions and channeled ethnic conflict intomore peaceful and constructive directions.

Does the drive toward supranational organizations and the economic and politicalintegration of European countries signify a trend away from ethnic fragmenta-tion? There are several reasons why this is unlikely. First, the principle of self-determination is now viewed the world over as one of the basic rights of allpeoples and as a legitimate basis for governance. Second, with a myriad of humanrights organizations (Amnesty International, Middle East Watch, the MinorityRights Group, America Watch, Asia Watch, and Cultural Survival) monitoringdiscriminatory and repressive practices of regimes, it is likely that the problemsof minorities will receive greater world attention and support, encouraging ethnicmobilization by previously quiescent minorities.Third, the independence movements in the former Soviet regions also providesprecedents for other parts of the world. As John Lewis Gaddis points out, Ifthe boundaries of the dying Soviet empire are to be revised, then why shouldboundaries established by empires long since dead be prese r~ed? ~~

Recent world reaction to the Kurdish massacres and the Yugoslav internation-ality conflicts suggests that there is now greater support than at any time sinceWorld War I1 for international intervention to aid movements for autonomy.In the words of French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, This break in thelongstanding and rigid doctrine (of noninterference in the internal affairs ofstates) permits the hope today that the international community will find themeans to intervene in similar cases, and first of all the Kurds. Under the threat8 Diamo nd, Nigeria in Diamo nd, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries:

Africa. Ethn ic homogeneity does not necessarily prod uce dem ocratic societies. Cou ntries like Nor thKorea and Haiti have homogenous populations and yet were nondemocratic.8 Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries 29.85 Heisler, Ethnicity an d Ethn ic Relations, 21-52.0


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Racial and Ethnic Conflicts: A Global Perspective

Rita Jalali; Seymour Martin Lipset

Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 107, No. 4. (Winter, 1992-1993), pp. 585-606.

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[Footnotes]

1 Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?

Walker Connor

World Politics, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Apr., 1972), pp. 319-355.

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33Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies

Teodor Shanin

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Jul., 1989), pp. 409-424.

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34 Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies

Teodor Shanin


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35Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies

Teodor Shanin


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46Competing Models of Political Mobilization: The Role of Ethnic Ties

Eric M. LeiferThe American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 87, No. 1. (Jul., 1981), pp. 23-47.

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46 The Flemish Movement in Belgium After World War II: A Dynamic Analysis

Franois Nielsen

American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, No. 1. (Feb., 1980), pp. 76-94.

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46 Ethnic Political Mobilization: The Welsh Case

Charles C. Ragin

American Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 4. (Aug., 1979), pp. 619-635.

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47 Ethnic Political Mobilization: The Welsh Case

Charles C. Ragin

American Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 4. (Aug., 1979), pp. 619-635.

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47 The Flemish Movement in Belgium After World War II: A Dynamic Analysis

Franois Nielsen

American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, No. 1. (Feb., 1980), pp. 76-94.

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Teodor Shanin


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59The Diffusion of Nationalism: Some Historical and Sociological Perspectives

A. D. SmithThe British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Jun., 1978), pp. 234-248.

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66 Police and Military in the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict

Cynthia H. Enloe

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 433, Ethnic Conflict in theWorld Today. (Sep., 1977), pp. 137-149.

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79Ethnic Politics and Economic Power

Milton J. Esman

Comparative Politics, Vol. 19, No. 4. (Jul., 1987), pp. 395-418.

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80 Equal Chances versus Equal Results

Seymour Martin Lipset

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 523, Affirmative ActionRevisited. (Sep., 1992), pp. 63-74.

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