scholarly journals State Networks and Intra-Ethnic Group Variation in the 2011 Syrian Uprising

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (7) ◽  
pp. 995-1027
Author(s):  
Kevin Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion ◽  
Group Variation

The 2011 Syrian uprising looks, from afar, like a paradigmatic example of ethnically exclusive rule giving way to civil war. The ruling regime is drawn almost exclusively from the Alawi minority, and the challengers were drawn heavily from the Sunni majority. But many Sunnis remained quiescent or actively supported the regime. This article argues that variation in revolutionary participation among members of an excluded ethnic group is best explained in terms of the networks states construct across ethnic boundaries. It identifies several forms of linkage that regimes can develop with their subject populations and relates them to variations in local social structure. Drawing on an original data set of ethnic identity and challenge events in the Syrian uprising, the article quantitatively tests the state networks hypothesis. Its findings suggest that the mechanisms commonly associated with ethnic identity and “ethnic exclusion” frequently operate upon social boundaries below the ethnic group level.

When decentralisation undermines representation: ethnic exclusion and state ownership in DR Congo's new provinces

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-157
Author(s):  
Alma Bezares Calderon ◽  
Pierre Englebert ◽  
Lisa Jené
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
State Ownership ◽  
The State ◽  
Dr Congo ◽  
Ethnic Representation ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion

AbstractAfrican regimes commonly use strategies of balanced ethnic representation to build support. Decentralisation reforms, often promoted in order to improve political representation and state access, can undermine such strategies. In this article we use the example of the DR Congo to show the extent to which the multiplication of decentralised provinces is upending a political system largely based until now upon collective ethnic representation in the state. Not only are Congo's new provinces more ethnically homogeneous than their predecessors, but many of them have also witnessed political takeover and monopolisation by the province's dominant ethnic group. In addition, the increased number of Congolese who now find themselves non-autochthonous to their province of residence heightens their vulnerability and the potential for local conflict. Decentralisation, whose intent was proximity to governance, might well end up excluding more Congolese from the benefits of political representation. The article uses original empirical evidence on provincial ethnic distributions to support its claims.

Civilian Victimization and Ethnic Civil War

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1199-1225
Author(s):  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Simon Hug ◽  
Livia I. Schubiger ◽  
Francisco Villamil
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Targeted Violence ◽  
Structural Variables ◽  
Global Coverage

While many studies provide insights into the causes of wartime civilian victimization, we know little about how the targeting of particular segments of the civilian population affects the onset and escalation of armed conflict. Previous research on conflict onset has been largely limited to structural variables, both theoretically and empirically. Moving beyond these static approaches, this article assesses how the state-led targeting of specific ethnic groups affects the likelihood of ethnic conflict onset and the evolution of conflicts once they break out. Relying on a new data set with global coverage that captures the ethnic identity of civilian victims of targeted violence, we find evidence that the state-led civilian victimization of particular ethnic groups increases the likelihood that the latter become involved in ethnic civil war. We also find tentative, yet more nuanced, evidence that ethnic targeting by state forces affects the escalation of ongoing conflicts.

A Zero-Sum Game? Repression and Protest in China

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yao Li
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The State ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Popular Contention

Most scholarship on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes focuses on severe repression and transgressive protest (e.g. revolt), suggesting a zero-sum game played by the state and challengers. However, a burgeoning literature suggests that less brutal forms of authoritarian states have emerged in recent decades and that protesters in these countries tend to limit their challenges, avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities. If so, can the notion of the zero-sum game truly capture the nuances and complexities of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes? Taking the case of China, this article offers a systematic analysis of the pattern of repression and protest in a strong authoritarian state. Drawing on an original data set of 1,418 protest events in China, this article shows that the Chinese state permits some (albeit limited) space for protest and that most protesters confine themselves to this space. These findings thus provide quantitative evidence that popular contention in China is featured by a non-zero-sum game. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of popular contention in authoritarian settings.

scholarly journals The Enemy Within: Personal Rule, Coups, and Civil War in Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Roessler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Joint Control ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Cost

Why do rulers employ ethnic exclusion at the risk of civil war? Focusing on the region of sub-Saharan Africa, the author attributes this costly strategy to the commitment problem that arises in personalist regimes between elites who hold joint control of the state's coercive apparatus. As no faction can be sure that others will not exploit their violent capabilities to usurp power, elites maneuver to protect their privileged position and safeguard against others' first-a rising internal threat, rulers move to eliminate their rivals to guarantee their personal and political survival. But the cost of such a strategy, especially when carried out along ethnic lines, is that it increases the risk of a future civil war. To test this argument, the author employs the Ethnic Power Relations data set combined with original data on the ethnicity of conspirators of coups and rebellions in Africa. He finds that in Africa ethnic exclusion substitutes civil war risk for coup risk. And rulers are significantly more likely to exclude their coconspirators—the very friends and allies who helped them come to power—than other included groups, but at the cost of increasing the risk of a future civil war with their former allies. In the first three years after being purged from the central government, coconspirators and their coethnics are sixteen times more likely to rebel than when they were represented at the apex of the regime.

Networks, Informal Governance, and Ethnic Violence in a Syrian City

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Network Access ◽  
Informal Governance ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion ◽  
Group Variation ◽  
Network Properties ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTIn cross-national studies, ethnic exclusion is robustly associated with the onset of violent challenge to incumbent regimes. But significant variation remains at the subnational level—not all members of an excluded ethnic group join in challenge. This article accounts for intra-ethnic group variation in terms of the network properties of local communities, nested within ethnic groups, and the informal ties that regimes forge to some segments of the ethnically excluded population. Mobilization within an excluded ethnic group is most likely among local communities where members are densely linked to one another and lack network access to state-controlled resources. Drawing on a case study of the Syrian city of Homs in the 2011 uprising, this article demonstrates how the Syrian regime’s strategies of managing the Sunni population of Homs shaped patterns of challenge. On the one hand, the state’s toleration of spontaneous settlements on the city’s periphery helped to reproduce dense network ties. On the other hand, the regime’s informal bargains with customary leaders instrumentalized those ties to manage local populations. These bargains could not withstand the regime’s use of violence against challengers, which meant that these same local networks became crucial factors in impelling and sustaining costly antiregime mobilization.

Ethnicity, Local Interests, and the State: Yi Communities in Southwest China

1990 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stevan Harrell
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Rice Field ◽  
Southwest China ◽  
The State ◽  
Separate Group ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Traits

People who are not members of the Han Chinese majority and who are officially classified as members of the Yi minzu (“ethnic group”) inhabit many villages within fifty kilometers of the industrial city of Panzhihua (formerly Dukou) at the southernmost point of Sichuan province. These people differ widely from each other in language and other cultural traits and in the nature of their relationship to their non-Yi neighbors. Of three Yi communities studied in the winter of 1988, one is isolated from and culturally distinct from the Han society of its neighbors, and its separate ethnic identity is taken by Yi and Han as a given. given. In another community, Yi and Han live totally intermixed and are culturally identical, and again the separate ethnic identity of the Yi and Han is accepted by all concerned. In the third community, the people classified as Yi are also culturally identical with the Han, though they live separately. Although they are classified as Yi, they do not admit that they belong to the Yi minzu; they insist instead that they are a separate group altogether—the shuitian zu or “rice-field people.” This paper attempts to explain why the nature of ethnic identity is so different in the three Yi communities.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Multiple Generations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Group Variation

Mexican Americans are unique in the panoply of American ethnoracial groups in that they are the descendants of the largest and longest lasting immigration stream in U.S. history. Today, there are approximately 24 million U.S.-born Mexican Americans, many of whom are multiple generations removed from their immigrant ancestors. Contrary to traditional assimilation theories, which predict that ethnicity and ethnic distinctions will disappear by the third generation, Mexican Americans exhibit a persistent and durable ethnicity with regard to their ethnic identity, culture, and networks. However, there is much heterogeneity within the population which ranges on a continuum from symbolic ethnicity to consequential ethnicity. We argue that one of the reasons for the group-level durability and the within-group variation is due to the existence of a strong ethnic core, the importance of which has been overlooked in previous assimilation theories.

scholarly journals Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 757-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott Green
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
The State ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Politics ◽  
The Core ◽  
National Identification ◽  
Sub Saharan

The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, or Staatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic identity of the president), members of this group identify more with the nation, but when this group is out of power members identify more with their ethnic group. This finding has important implications for the study of nationalism, ethnicity and African politics.

scholarly journals Ethnic Identity and Genome Wide Runs of Homozygosity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fieder ◽  
Brittany L. Mitchell ◽  
Scott Gordon ◽  
Susanne Huber ◽  
Nicholas G. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Longitudinal Data ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Sequence Variants ◽  
Runs Of Homozygosity ◽  
Twin Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Total N ◽  
Genome Wide

AbstractIt is long known that inbreeding increases the detrimental effects of recessive sequence variants in “Runs of Homozygosity” (ROHs). However, although the phenotypic association of ROH has been investigated for a variety of traits, the statistical power of the results often remains limited as a sufficiently high number of cases are available for only a restricted number of traits. In the present study, we aim to analyze the association of runs of homozygosity with the trait “in-group ethnic favoritism”. This analysis assumes that if ethnic identity is important for an individual, that individual may tend to marry more frequently within their own group and therefore ROH are expected to increase. We hypothesize that an attitude preferring one’s own ethnic group may be associated with a stronger tendency of inbreeding and, as a result, with more and longer ROHs. Accordingly, we investigated the association between the attitude to someone’s own ethnicity and ROH, using the Wisconsin Longitudinal data (WLS, total N ~ 9000) as discovery data set and the Brisbane Twin data as replication data set (N ~ 8000). We find that both the number as well as the total length of homozygous segments are significantly positively associated with “in-group ethnic favoritism”, independent of the method used for ROH calculation.

Rotational Characteristics of the Green Solar Corona: 1947-1991

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 139-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rybák ◽  
V. Rušin ◽  
M. Rybanský
Keyword(s):  
Solar Corona ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Rotation Period ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Coronal Emission ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The World ◽  
Coronal Emission Line ◽  
Homogeneous Data

AbstractFe XIV 530.3 nm coronal emission line observations have been used for the estimation of the green solar corona rotation. A homogeneous data set, created from measurements of the world-wide coronagraphic network, has been examined with a help of correlation analysis to reveal the averaged synodic rotation period as a function of latitude and time over the epoch from 1947 to 1991.The values of the synodic rotation period obtained for this epoch for the whole range of latitudes and a latitude band ±30° are 27.52±0.12 days and 26.95±0.21 days, resp. A differential rotation of green solar corona, with local period maxima around ±60° and minimum of the rotation period at the equator, was confirmed. No clear cyclic variation of the rotation has been found for examinated epoch but some monotonic trends for some time intervals are presented.A detailed investigation of the original data and their correlation functions has shown that an existence of sufficiently reliable tracers is not evident for the whole set of examinated data. This should be taken into account in future more precise estimations of the green corona rotation period.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document