Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?

Abstract

A booming quantitative literature on large-scale political violence has identified important economic and political determinants of civil war. That literature has treated civil war as an aggregate category and has not considered if identity (ethnic/religious) wars have different causes than nonidentity wars. The author argues that this is an important distinction and that identity wars are due predominantly to political grievance rather than lack of economic opportunity. Ethnic heterogeneity is also associated differently with identity than nonidentity wars. Some systemic variables are also important determinants of civil war, and these have been neglected in the existing literature. An important new result is that living in a bad neighborhood, with undemocratic neighbors or neighbors at war, significantly increases a country's risk of experiencing ethnic civil war.