How ethnic structure affects civil conflict: A model of endogenous grievance

Authored by Alexander Kustov

Date Published: 2017

DOI: 10.1177/0738894215613035

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Flow charts Pseudocode

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Does ethnic structure affect the occurrence of civil conflict and, if so, how? This study develops an agent-based model of endogenous grievances that builds on the new constructivist conceptualization of ethnicity and the theories of group inequality and crosscuttingness. Specifically, I simulate conflict as a function of spontaneous economic disparities between nominal ethnic groups with no predefined salient categories and related antagonism. Then I apply the model to reconsider the effect of (bidimensional) ethnic structure on conflict, which has been largely dismissed in recent scholarship. By varying the parameters of ethnic demography in artificial societies, I conduct a series of replicable experiments revealing that various structural settings yield systematically different patterns of conflict. While there is no most hazardous structure per se, both polarization and crosscuttingness appear to decrease the likelihood of violence but increase its potential deadliness, which indicates a more general tradeoff of conflict incidence and intensity.

Tags

Agent-based model civil war polarization Segregation identity Violence ethnic identity War Politics Group inequality Horizontal inequalities Relative deprivation Fractionalization Cleavages