Ethnicity, Political Systems and Civil War

Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 46, No. 1, February 2002.
Copyright: Journal of Conflict Resolution

This paper analyzes the effect of ethnic division on civil war and the role of political systems in preventing these conflicts. First we show the importance of religious polarization and animist diversity in explaining the incidence of ethnic civil war. We find that religious differences are a social cleavage more important than linguistic differences when we analyze the development of a civil war. Second we find that being a consociational democracy significantly reduces the incidence of ethnic civil war.