Measuring Grievance: Ethno-Nationalist Exclusion and Civil War Onset
Lars-Erik Cederman (ETH)
Luc Girardin (ETH)
In a previous paper labeled "Beyond Fractionalization: Mapping Ethnicity Onto Nationalist Insurgencies", we introduced a new index of ethno-political mobilization, called N* that captures the risk of civil war. However, this measure taps merely the potential of violent conflict. In the current paper, we develop a model of civil war onset based on a combination of N* and an indicator of ethno-political exclusion. We find statistical support for a causal mechanism that relies on both ethno-political opportunity structures and minority grievances.