Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war

¶ … Fearon and Laitin piece? Was their account compelling?

In Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War, Fearon and Laitin challenges the conventional wisdom that the root cause of most civil war lies within ethnic, cultural and religious diversity.

Rather, the authors find strong empirical evidence that poverty, as measured by low national income per capita, bears a strong statistically significant relationship to an increased risk of civil conflict. While never disputing the pervasiveness of cultural grievances in many war-torn societies, the authors contend that such "grievances and ethnic differences are too common to help distinguish the countries and years that see civil wars" (Fearon, Laitin 81). Rather, economic variables are better predictors of the onset of civil war than cultural ones.

Civil wars arise in states that lack sufficient capacity to deter insurgency. "Where states are relatively weak, both fears and opportunities encourage the rise of would-be-rules who supply a rough local justice" (Fearon, Laitin 76). For this reason rebellion is best viewed as a rational decision by participants who are motivated by a deep-seated hope of acquiring material benefits and power.

The authors are quick to point out at the beginning that their focus on the factors that create opportunities for an effective insurgency, and not on underlying ethnic tensions, would surprise most lawmakers, journalists and scholars. Indeed, their conclusion is startling. Libraries and bookstores are demonstrations of the wide array of scholarship into ethnic cleansing, civil wars and genocide. In contrast, we would be hard-pressed to find just a few books with the central argument that a lack of government infrastructure -- such as post offices, courts, and road-building -- are creating vacuums for insurgents to fill from Tora Bora to Montana.

2. Did the Authors devote enough attention to the demographic explanations of civil conflict? How might further consideration effect their finding?

In going against the tide of scholarship on intrastate conflict, the authors were extremely conscientious of their scholarly obligation to devote significant time and attention to demographic factors. They presented factors such as ethnicity, diversity, religion, language, and population ages and clearly articulated how these were weighted in their statistical study. Their conclusion that none of these was as significant as per capita income as a proxy for effective governance was convincing in light of other opportunities for insurgency, such as rough terrain.

However, in regards to a truly ethnic war, what acts as motivation for rebellion cannot always be categorized as economic. The authors do not specifically address how their insurgency factors add up against the particular kind of organized violence that occurs in ethnic cleansing conflicts, such as massacres of men and boys while forcibly impregnating women through rape campaigns. In facing a threat to ones ethnic identity, the influence that opportunity costs exerts over an insurgent should decrease.