Not Set in Stone: Ethnicity and Civil War

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Michalopoulos and Papaioannou’s “The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa” focuses on the lasting impacts of the continent’s division between the foreign colonial powers. The text’s bottom line is that the main long-term effect was the creation of arbitrarily drawn borders that separate people’s ethnic homelands and continue persisting in the post-colonial age. The authors observe ethnic groups whose historical homelands went through such an ethnic partitioning and compare them to the non-partitioned and homogenous ethnic homelands. According to them, partitioned homelands demonstrate a much higher incidence of both civil wars and military interventions from neighboring countries when compared to their non-divided counterparts.¹ Moreover, the intensity of violence, whether against legitimate military targets in a state-driven conflict or against civilians, is also higher in partitioned ethics homelands than in the regions where non-partitioned groups reside.² The fact that split ethnic groups often have limited access to goods and services and that the governments are more likely to systematically oppress and discriminate against them also contributes to the tension.³ Thus, the authors establish a complex of interwoven factors that increase the likelihood of conflicts, including civil wars, in partitioned regions.

While the text offers a wealth of empirical evidence regarding the frequency and intensity of conflicts in split regions, be these civil or state-driven wars, one cannot help but notice that it is largely primordialist. What the authors study is not merely ethnic groups but a territorial separation of “the historical ethnic homeland” between different national states.⁴ Thus, the text operates on the assumption that an ethnic group is irrevocably connected to a specific territory associated with its origins, which is an essentially primordialist clause. Moreover, the emphasis on the “split” ethnic groups implicitly suggests that ethnicity is a rigid and non-malleable concept that retains its fundamental unity even when separated between separate states. These primordialist assumptions mean that the authors can actually underscore the fluidity of ethnicity as a construct and ethnic identity in individuals.

One factor that Michalopoulos and Papaioannou’s study does not pay enough attention to is identity shift. As Kalyvas points out in “Ethnic Defection in Civil War,” people’s ethnic identity may evolve and change, not to the last degree depending on the political actor that controls the territory they live in.⁵ In simpler terms, territorial control occurring in the split homelands discussed by Michalopoulos and Papaioannou may facilitate assimilation, and it would be too presumptuous to disregard this factor.

Apart from that, even if people maintain their ethnic identity associated with a historical homeland, ethnicity itself does not suffice as a predictor of their behavior in a conflict because ethnic defection is always a possibility. Once again, territorial control is essential and can foster collaboration “irrespective of initially adverse preferences,” including ethnic ties.⁶ If one accepts constructivist premises that people can change their ethnic identities and defect from an ethnically-motivated cause, Michalopoulos and Papaioannou’s primordialist approach may seem oversimplifying.

To summarize, “The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa” offers a wealth of valuable data but rests on largely primordialist concepts of ethnicity as rigid, non-malleable, and strongly associated with territory. This approach underscores the possibility of identity shift or ethnic defection, which can both happen in conflict settings. Thus, when analyzing civil wars or other conflicts in split ethnic homelands, one should pay careful attention to the dynamics of ethnic identity rather than presume that ethnicity is non-malleable and set in stone.

References

Kalyvas, Stathis N. “Ethnic Defection in Civil War.” Comparative Political Studies, vol. 41, no. 8, 2008, pp. 1043-1068.

Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. “The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 17620, 2011.

Footnotes

Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2.
Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2.
Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 3.
Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2.
Kalyvas 1061.
Kalyvas 1063.

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Not Set in Stone: Ethnicity and Civil War

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