Ethnic Stratification and the Equilibrium of Inequality: Ethnic Conflict in Post-colonial States Manuel Vogt 13,937 words 1 Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Lars-Erik Cederman, Carles Boix, Paul Huth, Nils-Christian Bor- mann, Dan Siegel, Matthijs Bogaards, Tom Pavone, Mark Beissinger, Simon Hug, as well as three anonymous reviewers of the journal for their valuable comments and suggestions. I would also like to express my gratitude to the participants of the Race, Ethnicity, and Identity workshop at Princeton University and the University of Maryland colloquium where I presented this work. The data used in this article can be accessed on the journal’s replication website. 2 Manuel Vogt ETH Zürich
[email protected] 3 Ethnic Stratification and the Equilibrium of Inequality: Ethnic Conflict in Post-colonial States Manuel Vogt Why are ethnic movements more likely to turn violent in some multiethnic countries than in oth- ers? Focusing on the long-term legacies of European overseas colonialism, this article investi- gates the effect of distinct ethnic cleavage types on the consequences of ethnic group mobiliza- tion. It argues that the colonial settler states and other stratified multiethnic states are charac- terized by an equilibrium of inequality, in which historically marginalized groups lack both the organizational strength and the opportunities for armed rebellion. In contrast, ethnic mobiliza- tion in the decolonized states and other segmented multiethnic societies is more likely to trigger violent conflict. The paper tests these arguments in a global quantitative study from 1946 to 2009, using new data on the linguistic and religious segmentation of ethnic groups.