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relationship between ethnic diversity and economic growth or public goods provision.
The results are mixed but generally find a negative relationship (Easterly and
Levine 1997; Alesina, Baqir, and Easterly 1999;Miguel2004;MiguelandGugerty2005;
Posner 2004a). Rabushka and Shepsle (1972) and Horowitz (1985) discussed cases
that they argued showed a tendency for ethnic polarization to undermine democracy,
but the recent wave of cross-national statistical work on determinants of democracy
has not closely examined the effect of ethnic variables. 19 As noted, there does not
appear to be a strong cross-national association between various measures of ethnic
diversity or demography and the onset of civil war (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Collier
and Hoeffler 2004).
For all three dependent variables—economic performance, violence, and especially
democracy—basic empirical work remains to be done. Regarding the first, we know
little about the mechanisms linking ethnic demographies to economic outcomes, and
we do not know whether ethnic demographies can reasonably be taken as exogenous
in studies of economic performance or economic policy. If, as suggested by the
European experience, strong states make ethnic homogeneity as much as the reverse,
then the negative relationships found in the small empirical literature may not be
fully causal. Regarding violence, we need systematic work on whether and when
state policies that discriminate against particular groups are associated with violent
conflict. 20 Also, there is no work to date systematically comparing the propensity of
ethnic as opposed to other political cleavages to cause violence. Regarding democracy,
even fairly basic cross-national analyses remain to be undertaken. Work on all three
dependent variables might be helped if we had cross-national survey data on how
people think about their ethnicity and what role it plays in their thinking about
politics. 21
As discussed above, theoretical work on the politicization of ethnicity and onset of
ethnic violence has proposed a number of logics for why and when these may occur.
Missing, with a few exceptions, are developed formalizations of these arguments that
would allow a deeper understanding of how the logics work and relate to one another.
Models examining how ethnic divisions affect democratic stability and performance
are almost completely absent, and as noted most models examining ethnicity and
violence could just as well be models of, say, class and violence. Finally, we lack a good
baseline model that would formalize the intuition that particular ethnic distinctions
are matters of social coordination and convention rather than simply given by history
and culture for all time. 22 Much remains to be done.
¹⁹ Przeworski et al. 2001 find little evidence for a direct impact of ethnic fractionalization on either
democratic onset or persistence, whereas Boix 2003 finds that democracy is less stable in ethnically
diverse middle-income countries. Fish and Brooks 2004 find no cross-national relationship.
Generalizing from her analysis of India, Chandra 2005 argues that under the right institutional
conditions ethnic diversity might actually support democracy and democratic stability.
²⁰ Cederman and Girardin 2005 find some evidence that countries in which ethnic minorities control
the state apparatus are more civil war prone.
²¹ See Bannon, Miguel, and Posner 2004 for an interesting analysis of this sort.
²² Fearon 1999 and Posner 2005 propose simple models of this sort, but neither is fully developed and
analyzed.