Predicting the decline of ethnic civil war
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | Lars-Erik Cederman,Julian Wucherpfennig,Kristian Skrede Gleditsch |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343316684191 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Predicting the decline of ethnic civil war:
Was Gurr right and for the right reasons?
Lars-Erik Cederman
Centre for Comparative and International Studies (CIS), ETH Zu
¨rich
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Department of Government, University of Essex & Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Julian Wucherpfennig
Hertie School of Governance
Abstract
Many scholars have detected a decrease of political violence, but the causes of this decline remain unclear. As a
contribution to this debate, we revisit the controversy over trends in conflict after the end of the Cold War. While
many made ominous predictions of surging ethnic warfare, Gurr presented evidence of a pacifying trend since the
mid-1990s and predicted a further decline in ethnic conflict in an article on ‘the waning of ethnic war’. Leveraging
more recent data on ethnic groups and their participation in ethnic civil wars, this study evaluates if Gurr was right
about the decline of ethnic conflict, and if he was right for the right reasons. We assess whether an increase in
governments’ accommodative policies toward ethnic groups can plausibly account for a decline in ethnic civil war.
Our findings lend considerable support to an account of the pacifying trend that stresses the granting of group rights,
regional autonomy, and inclusion in power-sharing, as well as democratization and peacekeeping.
Keywords
civil war, decline of war, ethnic conflict, ethnic inclusion, group rights, power sharing
Although current violent conflicts such as Ukraine,
Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and Yemen dominate head-
lines, prominent conflict researchers argue that armed
conflict has declined in recent years. Pinker & Mack
(2014) note that the media by definition are biased and
will give more attention to violent events than peace or
‘things that don’t happen’, and emphasize that ‘[t]he
only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to
count’. In a magisterial survey, Pinker (2011) argues that
the current trend is part of a pacification process with
long historical roots, while Goldstein (2011) attributes
the more recent global decline in armed conflict to the
influence of peacekeeping and other more indirect inter-
ventions by international organizations. Although some
have questioned the finding itself – either through chal-
lenging parts of the decline-of-violence thesis or arguing
that a decline of some types of violence hides an increase
in other types of violence (e.g. Braumoeller, 2013;
Harrison&Wolf,2012;Fazal,2014;Gray,2015;
Kaldor, 2013; Thayer, 2013; Levy & Thompson,
2013) – the empirical claim has generally held up well
(e.g. Gat, 2013; Gleditsch & Pickering, 2014; Pinker,
2015; Va
¨yrynen, 2013).
What is less clear is what particular mechanisms are
driving the decline. Sweeping claims about macro trends
leading to a general decline of political violence have
been more prominent than efforts to trace specific causal
mechanisms. We focus on ethnic civil wars as a particu-
larly important subclass of political violence. They
remain an important international security concern, as
Corresponding author:
lcederman@ethz.ch
Journal of Peace Research
2017, Vol. 54(2) 262–274
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343316684191
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