IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v21y2009i3p365-394.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Creation of Social Order in Ethnic Conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Keisuke Nakao

    (University of Hawaii, keisuken@hawaii.edu)

Abstract

This article develops a model of random matching with costly monitoring to demonstrate that the threat of ethnic conflict can function to create an in-group policing mechanism which helps enforce inter-ethnic social order. Instead of regarding ethnic conflict as a form of collective penalty on an unidentified wrongdoer and his ethnic brethren (Fearon and Laitin, 1996), we argue that ethnic conflict is triggered by a wrongdoing because avengers seek to take advantage of in-group networks for detecting and punishing the culprit. Our theory predicts that the success of inter-ethnic cooperation hinges on the quality of in-group policing. As a consequence, a group with lower-quality policing tends to have more frequent and longer disputes with other groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Keisuke Nakao, 2009. "Creation of Social Order in Ethnic Conflict," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 365-394, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:21:y:2009:i:3:p:365-394
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629809103970
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629809103970
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629809103970?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Ellison, 1994. "Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma with Anonymous Random Matching," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 567-588.
    2. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    3. Evans, Robert & Maskin, Eric, 1989. "Efficient renegotiation--proof equilibria in repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 361-369, December.
    4. Farrell, Joseph & Maskin, Eric, 1989. "Renegotiation in repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 327-360, December.
    5. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 2000. "Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(4), pages 845-877, October.
    6. Bendor, Jonathan & Mookherjee, Dilip, 1987. "Institutional Structure and the Logic of Ongoing Collective Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 129-154, March.
    7. Michihiro Kandori, 1992. "Social Norms and Community Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 63-80.
    8. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 1996. "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(4), pages 715-735, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Smith, 2012. "Reputation, Social Identity and Social Conflict," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 14(4), pages 677-709, August.
    2. Andrew W. Bausch, 2014. "Evolving intergroup cooperation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 369-393, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bethune, Zachary & Hu, Tai-Wei & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2018. "Indeterminacy in credit economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 556-584.
    2. David G. Pearce, 1991. "Repeated Games: Cooperation and Rationality," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 983, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Christian Stoff, 2004. "Establishing Cooperation between Groups: Ingroup versus Outgroup Punishment," SOI - Working Papers 0416, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich, revised Feb 2006.
    4. Fahn, Matthias & MacLeod, W. Bentley & Muehlheusser, Gerd, 2023. "Past and Future Developments in the Economics of Relational Contracts," IZA Discussion Papers 16427, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2015. "Sustaining Cooperation: Community Enforcement vs. Specialized Enforcement," NBER Working Papers 21457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    7. Staiger, Robert W., 1995. "International rules and institutions for trade policy," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1495-1551, Elsevier.
    8. Timothy L. Sorenson, 2007. "Credible collusion in multimarket oligopoly," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 115-128.
    9. Harbaugh, Rick & To, Ted, 2014. "Opportunistic discrimination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 192-204.
    10. Mason, Charles F. & Polasky, Stephen & Tarui, Nori, 2017. "Cooperation on climate-change mitigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 43-55.
    11. Eliana La Ferrara, "undated". "Ethnicity and Reciprocity: A model of Credit Transactions in Ghana," Working Papers 193, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    12. Balmaceda, Felipe & Escobar, Juan F., 2017. "Trust in cohesive communities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 289-318.
    13. Aramendia, Miguel & Wen, Quan, 2014. "Justifiable punishments in repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 16-28.
    14. Jenna Bednar, 2006. "Is Full Compliance Possible?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 347-375, July.
    15. Dou, Winston Wei & Ji, Yan & Wu, Wei, 2021. "Competition, profitability, and discount rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 582-620.
    16. Compte, Olivier, 2002. "On Failing to Cooperate When Monitoring Is Private," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 151-188, January.
    17. McCutcheon, Barbara, 1997. "Do Meetings in Smoke-Filled Rooms Facilitate Collusion?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 330-350, April.
    18. Bård Harstad & Francesco Lancia & Alessia Russo, 2019. "Compliance Technology and Self-enforcing Agreements," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-29.
    19. Susanne Lohmann, 1997. "Linkage Politics," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 41(1), pages 38-67, February.
    20. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and game theory. A 70th anniversary," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-7.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:21:y:2009:i:3:p:365-394. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.