DEMOCRACY AROUND THE WORLD | Giving citizens a voice
11 June 2008
The Effects of Ethnic Strife
Doh C. Shin and Christopher D. Raymond
Research shows that political and economic reforms reduce ethnic conflicts, even in countries where a minority ethnic group dominates the economy, according to Doh C. Shin and Christopher D. Raymond. Shin is professor of political science, and Raymond is a graduate teaching assistant, both at the University of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri.
At the beginning of 2007, Kenya was considered one of Africa’s most successful democracies; at the end of the same year, Kenya was in chaos. Ethnic violence erupted in the country after incumbent President Muwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the highly disputed presidential election held on December 27, 2007.
The Luo, the ethnic group supporting losing candidate Raila Odinga, have long resented the wealth and power of the Kikuyu, the ethnic group of Kibaki. Many Luo accused Kibaki and the Kikuyu of engaging in electoral fraud, and in the months following the election, their violent protests led to the death of as many as 1,500 people and the displacement of 250,000.
This outbreak of ethnic violence in the wake of a free and competitive election in one of Africa’s most successful democracies has rekindled the debate about whether certain types of developing countries should pursue the simultaneous establishment of democracy and capitalism.
For decades, conventional wisdom has said that democracy and free markets work together to promote economic prosperity and to improve citizens’ quality of life. At least one research paper has argued that combining free markets with democracy in countries where an ethnic minority is economically dominant can produce a highly explosive situation because free markets and democracy often favor different ethnic groups: The former favors a minority, while the latter favors the majority.
In countries such as Indonesia and Zimbabwe, where a small ethnic minority dominates the market with a disproportionate amount of economic resources, for example, establishing democracy and giving voice to the previously silenced majority can spur expression of ethnic hatred and resentment against the rich. The ensuing outbreak of ethnic violence, in turn, will likely hinder, if not halt, the development of democracy and capitalism.
Crafting a Test
We decided to test the validity of the assertion that attempts to build capitalist democracies in ethnically divided societies, especially those with a market-dominant minority, or MDM, fail mainly due to outbreaks of political violence.
Our tests used two sets of multinational data. From ethnic diversity data collected by Harvard economist Alberto Alesina and his colleagues, we divide 125 countries, all at various levels of political and economic transitions, into three categories based on their ethnic makeup. These categories are countries without a market-dominant minority and with low ethnic division (42), those without a market-dominant minority and with high ethnic division (47), and all countries with a market-dominant minority (36).
Using data from the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), we compare the countries’ levels of social conflict and their achievement levels concerning democratic and economic reforms. The BTI measures the political and economic status of 125 developing and transitional countries on an 11-point scale, ranging from a low of 0 to a high of 10. For easy interpretation, we grouped the scores into two levels, low (0-5) and high (6-10), and then calculated the percentages of countries falling into each level.
Figure 1 shows the mean levels of social conflict experienced by each of the three ethnic categories of countries. The conflict levels are highest (5.3) in countries with a market-dominant minority, followed by countries with high ethnic division (4.9) and those with low ethnic division (3.2).
As shown in Figure 2, 44 percent of those countries with a market-dominant minority experience a high level of conflict (6 or higher on the BTI scale), 26 percent of those with high ethnic division, and 12 percent of those with low ethnic division. Countries with a market-dominant minority experience a significantly higher level of social conflict or violence than other countries do.
Figure 1 also shows the mean levels of political and free-market reforms implemented in the three categories of countries. Countries with low ethnic division have the highest achievement level of combined political and economic reforms (6.9), followed by countries with a market-dominant minority (5.4) and countries with high ethnic division (5.1). Achieving a high level of political and economic reforms (6 or higher on the BTI scale) are 69 percent of countries with low ethnic division, 39 percent of those with a market-dominant minority, and 30 percent of those with high ethnic division (see Figure 2).
The Findings
These findings indicate that the high level of social conflict and violence in ethnically divided societies makes it difficult to carry out political and economic reforms in those societies. However, contrary to other research, the existence of disproportionately rich minorities in those societies does not necessarily make it more difficult to implement those reforms.
How does the achievement of political and free-market reforms affect ethnic conflict? To explore this question, we divided the 125 transitional countries into four groups, based on whether their achievement levels are high on neither, one, or both reforms. The resulting four patterns are the politically and economically unreformed (32 countries), the economically reformed (17), the politically reformed (13), and the politically and economically reformed (63). The fourth pattern refers to those countries that have implemented democratization and marketization in parallel. According to another scholar, these are the countries where ethnic groups divided along economic lines would be likely to engage in violent conflict.
For each reform pattern, Figure 3 shows the percentages of countries experiencing a high level of social conflict. Contrary to what is expected from other research, the incidence of social conflict is lowest (10 percent) among countries that have successfully pursued parallel development and highest (48 percent) among those that have implemented neither of the reforms. Falling in the middle are countries that have implemented only one of the reforms; experiencing high levels of social conflict are 22 percent of the politically reformed countries and 14 percent of the economically reformed.
These findings indicate that as countries transform their political and economic systems into successful capitalistic democracies, they lower their chances of experiencing high levels of social conflict. This finding holds true even among countries with a market-dominant minority.
Our simple analysis suggests that ethnic division does indeed promote social conflict and violence and thus can hinder the transformation of political and economic systems. The successful transformation of both systems, however, is an effective way to reduce social conflict and improve the quality of citizens’ lives, even in ethnically divided societies with market-dominant minorities.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
