Abstract
Recent decades have seen an increased occurrence of civil war and ethnopolitical conflict in certain areas of Europe. Whereas, in Latin America and the Middle East, incidents of ethnopolitical warfare decreased by 74 percent and 54 percent, respectively, between 1989 and 1999, incidents of such conflict increased by 43 percent in Europe, by 40 percent in Asia, and by 35 percent in Africa during the same time period.1 In fact, the recent upsurge of ethnopolitical violence within these areas seems to be a continuation of a previously established trend which dates back to the latter half of the 1940s, as a majority of the civil wars fought during the postwar era have been fought in the name of ethnonational self-determination.2 Indeed, remarkably, since the end of World War II such intrastate conflicts have in fact been more frequent and numerous than interstate conflicts.3 During the period from 1945 to 1999 alone, approximately 130 intrastate civil wars have brought death to 20 million people and have caused the displacement of up to 70 million people in more than 70 countries across the globe; by contrast, during the same period, only 25 interstate wars have occurred, with a total death rate close to 3 million.4 In absolute numbers, as of 2003 there were approximately 70 ongoing intrastate ethnopolitical conflicts still in an actively violent stage.5
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Notes
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I largely draw on Anthony Smith’s ethnosymbolist definition of an ethnic group as a community of people sharing five crucial traits: a belief in a common ancestry, common historical memories, some shared culture including language and religion, and, last but not least, a sense of attachment to a specific territory which is regarded as the ethnic homeland. Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57–97.
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Emphasis in the original. Christopher Marsh, “The Religious Dimension of Post-Communist “Ethnic” Conflict,” Nationalities Papers, 35:5 (November 2007), 811.
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In their recent work, partially out of their recognition of the fact that greed and grievance may be two sides of the same coin, Collier and Hoeffler have come to rename their theory as the “feasibility theory,” the central argument of which is the somewhat banal statement that: “where a rebellion is financially and militarily feasible it will occur.” Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Dominic Rohner, “Beyond Greed and Grievance: Feasibility and Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers, 61 (2009), 1–2.
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© 2013 Emil Souleimanov
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Souleimanov, E. (2013). Theorizing on the Causes of Civil War and Ethnopolitical Conflict. In: Understanding Ethnopolitical Conflict. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280237_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280237_2
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