Ethnic Cleavages

Civil wars in poor countries are often attributed to ethnic hatred. The research carried out by the research below indicates that this may be an over-simplification. According to some of the studies, there seems to be a higher risk of civil war outbreak in countries where one ethnic group is dominant relative to a sizeable minority. Countries that are highly fragmentated have less civil wars than any others, probably because the fragmentation leads to coordination problems. Other studies find ethnic fragmentation to increase the probability of conflict. The papers listed below discuss various aspects of the relationship between ethnic cleavages and civil war onset, duration, and successful termination.

Documents

The policy research working papers below are drawn from the World Bank's institutional archives. Each link opens a page with an abstract of the document and several download options. Choose the 'light-weight documents' option for easy download.

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