Democratization, Political Institutions, And Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1985-1998

Although there has been much debate about whether democratization causes ethnic conflict, and many comparativists have argued about which kinds of political institutions are best for managing communal strife, little large-N work has addressed these issues. The authors apply a theory of ethnic conflict--the ethnic security dilemma--to derive predictions about the impact of democratization and political institutions on ethnic unrest.