Variation in Ethnic Violence

In “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence”, Rogers Brubaker and David Laitin highlight that the fundamental problem in the literature concerning ethnic violence does not have to do with competing theories about a well-defined phenomenon; rather, the overarching argument has to do with what exactly constitutes ethnic violence. Can ethnic violence be distinctly classified as one particular phenomenon and if so, when is the disconnect between ethnic and political violence bridged? In other words, when do these two phenomena become one and the same?

First of all, while pointing out that ethnic violence is certainly not ubiquitous, Brubaker and Laitin do emphasize the recent increase in its occurrence in regions of the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa. The first explanation concerns the decline or “decay of the Weberian state”, an argument which utilizes Max Weber’s definition of the state as an entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a territory, or a defined piece of real estate. Brubaker and Laitin point out that inability of states in the developing world to maintain order as a result of diminishing transnational, state-strengthening resources. The lack of an “external patron” to help maintain peace in the region makes ethnic cleavages more likely to translate into conflict, and ultimately, erupt into violence.

What Brubaker and Laitin fail to point out in this discussion, however, is the analogous ability of transnational resources to function as means for furthering ethnic violence. For example, in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, I would argue that the availability of economic and military resources to the Yakouba ethnic group in Cote d’Ivoire from their kin across the Liberian border largely influenced their choice of armed violence rather than non-violent protest against the government in 2002. The availability of transnational resources can therefore play a role in the method of protest—violent or non-violent—that an ethnic group may choose.
Brubaker and Laitin’s second explanation concerns the ideological shifts that have occurred since the fall of Communism. The authors point to ethnic separatist movements between the 1950s and 1980s that framed the struggle between the opposition and the incumbent in the context of the larger struggle between communism and capitalism. Today, as many NGOs and international institutions are beginning to recognize individual ethnic group claims, the incentive of violent challengers to structure their struggle in the context of human rights and ethnic claims has strengthened. In fact, this “ethnicization” of violence is perhaps the underlying reason behind Brubaker and Laitin’s claim that interpretations of violent struggles as exemplars of ethnic violence are subject to so much dispute.

When examining violence within the framework of ethnic conflict, Brubaker and Laitin point out the importance of looking at violence not as a degree but rather, as a phase of conflict. The authors, therefore, establish the definition of ethnic violence to as “violence perpetrated across ethnic lines, in which at least one party is not a state, and in which the ethnic difference is noted…as having been integral rather than incidental to the violence.” They then provide an analytical review of the literature on ethnic violence, examining three particular approaches to ethnic violence: inductive or data-driven, theory-driven (deriving from realism, game theory and rational choice theory) and culturalist. Within the inductive approach, what I found most interesting was Laitin and Brubaker’s discussion of the variation between regions with similar ethnic tensions in which one has erupted into ethnic violence while ethnic conflict in the other region has been largely nonviolent. Many questions arise when examining this variation, as in the case between the Basques and the Catalan. Why is it that ethnic conflict has been characterized by the violence of the terrorist ETA while the conflict in Catalonia has been relatively non-violent? If Laitin and Brubaker define violence as a phase in ethnic conflict, is it only a matter of time before ethnic conflict will erupt into violence in the autonomous region of Catalonia? In analyzing these questions, I found it especially helpful to look at Brubaker and Laitin’s “cultural construction of fear” within their cultural approaches. Indeed, the legacy of Francisco Franco’s repression and attempted elimination of Basque and Catalan language and culture in attempt to establish a unified, centralist Spanish identity still continues today. However, it seems that while the main concern in Catalonia has been the perpetuation of its language and culture, the Basque language, spoken and understood by less than one-fourth of the ethnic group, has been more a source of division than anything else. Therefore, Basque nationalism is still largely based on the fear of centralist repression (from the Spanish state) rather than on its common cultural or linguistic identity.

As I attempted to analyze and digest Brubaker and Laitin’s three approaches towards ethnic conflict, the existing variation and heterogeneity between occurrences of ethnic violence became a dominant theme. Brubaker and Laitin’s discussion of the need to identify, analyze and explain the differences between instances of ethnic violence is a extremely valuable, for, rather than attempting to construct one enormous and dilute theory of ethnic violence, we are better off analyzing the variations first and foremost. After all, that is what comparative politics is all about.