IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v41y1997i5p638-648.html

Competition and Ethnic Conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas Dion

    (Department of Political Science, Purdue University)

Abstract

One of the most important theories of ethnic conflict focuses on the competition hypothesis: conflict occurs between ethnic groups when they interact more rather than when they are kept separated. If true, this theory implies that attempts at desegregation will necessarily be associated with ethnic conflict and violence. The author presents a formal model that suggests that the apparent competition effect uncovered in the empirical literature may, in fact, be spurious. Ethnic conflict can appear to increase with competition, even in the case where individuals are less likely to attack individuals of other ethnicities than members of their own ethnicity. A consideration of some alterations in the basic model suggests that the result is robust. An exploratory exercise shows that after controlling for the selection bias problems involved in studying ethnic conflict, the predicted competition effects disappear.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas Dion, 1997. "Competition and Ethnic Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 41(5), pages 638-648, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:41:y:1997:i:5:p:638-648
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002797041005002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002797041005002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002797041005002?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. 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. Ravi Bhavanani & David Backer, 1999. "Localized Ethnic Conflict and Genocide: Accounting for Differences in Rwanda and Burundi," Working Papers 99-07-053, Santa Fe Institute.

    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. Cengiz Erisen & Evren Celik Wiltse, 2017. "Dividedness, Institutions and Economic Performance: A Cross-National Analysis of Democratic Stability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1145-1161, July.
    2. Indra de Soysa & Synøve Almås, 2019. "Does Ethnolinguistic Diversity Preclude Good Governance? A Comparative Study with Alternative Data, 1990‐2015," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(4), pages 604-636, November.
    3. Christopher Blattman, 2009. "Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research," Working Papers id:2231, eSocialSciences.
    4. Gerring, John & Thacker, Strom C. & Lu, Yuan & Huang, Wei, 2015. "Does Diversity Impair Human Development? A Multi-Level Test of the Diversity Debit Hypothesis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 166-188.
    5. Kazuya Yamamoto, 2015. "Mobilization, Flexibility of Identity, and Ethnic Cleavage," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 18(2), pages 1-8.
    6. Andreas P. Kyriacou, 2005. "Rationality, Ethnicity And Institutions: A Survey Of Issues And Results," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 23-42, February.
    7. Peter T. Leeson & Claudia R. Williamson, 2011. "Can’t We All Just Get Along? Fractionalization, Institutions and Economic Consequences," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Coyne & Rachel L. Mathers (ed.), The Handbook on the Political Economy of War, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Miguel, Edward & Gugerty, Mary Kay, 2005. "Ethnic diversity, social sanctions, and public goods in Kenya," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2325-2368, December.
    9. Thomas Markussen & Kitavi Mbuvi, 2011. "When Does Ethnic Diversity Lead to Violence? Evidence from the 2007 Elections in Kenya," Discussion Papers 11-19, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    10. Sonal Pandya & David Leblang, 2017. "Risky business: Institutions vs. social networks in FDI," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 91-117, July.
    11. Letrouit,Lucie Michele Maya & Selod,Harris, 2020. "Trust or Property Rights ? Can Trusted Relationships Substitute for Costly Land Registration in West African Cities ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9310, The World Bank.
    12. Sherrill Stroschein, 2014. "Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 656(1), pages 97-115, November.
    13. Werner, Katharina & Skali, Ahmed, 2025. "Violent conflict and parochial trust: Lab-in-the-field and survey evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    14. Kingston, Christopher, 2008. "Social structure and cultures of corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 90-102, July.
    15. Bednar, Jenna & Jones-Rooy, Andrea & Page, Scott E., 2015. "Choosing a future based on the past: Institutions, behavior, and path dependence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 312-332.
    16. Yann Algan & Camille Hémet & David D. Laitin, 2016. "The Social Effects of Ethnic Diversity at the Local Level: A Natural Experiment with Exogenous Residential Allocation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(3), pages 696-733.
    17. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107629707, January.
    18. Andrew W. Bausch, 2014. "Evolving intergroup cooperation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 369-393, December.
    19. Stroschein, Sherrill, 2013. "Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction: Bosnia in Comparative Perspective, 1995-Present," WIDER Working Paper Series 089, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Yuri M. Zhukov, 2014. "Theory of Indiscriminate Violence," Working Paper 365551, Harvard University OpenScholar.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:jocore:v:41:y:1997:i:5:p:638-648. 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: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    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.