Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars

The increasing incidence of ethnic conflicts, and the much-publicized consequences of these conflicts, have attracted the interest of many researchers in the social sciences. Many studies have addressed directly the issue of ethnic diversity and its effects on social conflicts and civil wars. Political scientists have stressed the importance of institutions in the attenuation or intensification of social conflict in ethnically divided societies. Recently economists have connected ethnic diversity with important economic phenomena like investment, growth, or the quality of government (William Easterly and Ross Levine, 1997; Alberto Alesina et al., 2003; Rafael La Porta et al., 1999). The number of papers…