Drawing a Boundary between Structural Factors and Identity in Ethnic Conflict: Bringing Back the Role of Identity
Journal: Terrorism and Political Violence
Year: 2020

This article focuses on the causes of ethnic civil wars, and argues that in order to develop a better understanding of their onset and intractability, one needs to distinguish different types of ethnic civil wars from each other. It first evaluates structural factors in the outbreak of ethnic conflict and then proceeds to discuss ideational factors and finally suggests a theoretic framework of understanding ethnic conflict based upon identity. It develops hypotheses that would allow to discern s