From the end of the second World War, there has been a general tendency towards a decrease in the occurrence of interstate war and a corresponding shift to intrastate disputes such as ethnically forced civil war as the dominant form of war. Numerous reasons for this tendency have been proposed, and much ink has been spilled between different schools of international relations as to which is more convincing. Kalyvas’s Ethnic Defections in Civil War and Fearon and Laitin’s Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War can be used to critique Johnson’s piece, Partitioning to Peace, through the analysis of their perception of the concept of ethnicity and the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and findings. While the studies to be discussed in this essay offer valuable insights as to the salience of ethnicity in the civil war setting, a considerable amount is still left to explain in terms of the actual causes of aforementioned civil wars. In particular, these works concentrate solely on drawing conclusions about ethnicity but fail to realize they do not all define the term in the same way.
In Johnson’s Partitioning to Peace, he argues in favor of the concept of partition. As explained by Johnson, a partition is, “a uniformly effective tool in preventing a recurrence of war and low-level violence, but only if it includes the physical separation of ethnic groups” (Johnson 2008, 143). To support his point, Johnson employs what he calls the PEHI method to draw conclusions from existing data on civil wars. PEHI, the Post-partition Ethnic Homogeneity Index, captured the extent to which partition physically separated ethnic groups. It does this by using, “both new minorities to calculate the degree to which partition and population transfers succeeded in separating the warring groups” (Johnson 2008, 156). Using PEHI, Johnson concluded that, “the higher the ethnodemographic separation, the less likely war will recur within the first two years” (Johnson 2008, 160). However, Johnson’s sample size was six cases. This selection is not large enough to make a generalized and/or conclusive statement on the role ethnicity plays in the outbreak of civil war. It relies on secondary sources and does not include personal accounts. It also does not establish a meaningful connection with any of the actors in the cases to effectively attempt to understand every factor besides ethnicity that could come into play.
Johnson carries a hardened concept of ethnicity and consequently establishes it as the least common denominator of the groups in conflict. This mindset results in the automatic grouping of individuals based on that one factor, even if the conflict may have roots in another element of dissimilarity. This approach means selecting on the dependent variable which played a large role in molding the data to support Johnson’s position. Another discrepancy with Johnson’s conclusions is the lack of attention to the difference between structural and political factors. Both play large, significantly different roles and yet are treated as one element. An additional key conclusion missing from Johnson’s data is the explanation of why structural factors would not allow ethnic softening when Johnson states himself that structural factors promote hardening when a war starts.
Kalyvas’ Ethnic Defections in Civil War was a qualitative, single-case study. His study was substantially more in-depth than Johnson’s because Kalyvas employed his ability to speak Greek to conduct interviews with locals that had gone through the conflict he was focused on. Throughout his piece, Kalyvas takes on a very constructivist approach using two processes consistent with the approach: ethnic defection and identity shift. Ethnic defection is defined as, “a process whereby individuals join organizations explicitly opposed to the national aspirations of the ethnic group with which they identify and end up fighting against their coethnics” (Kalyvas 2008, 1045). Conversely, identity shift is defined as, “the acquisition by individuals of a new ethnic (or national) identity that replaces the old one, such as is frequently observed among immigrants in the United States – a process whose aggregate end result is assimilation (Alba & Nee, 2003; Wimmer, 2007)” (Kalyvas 2008, 1045). Both processes recognize identity as a malleable trait. Viewing ethnicity as a fluid concept establishes a different point of view to his research as opposed to Johnson’s hardened strategy.
Kalyvas’ conclusion on ethnic defection is discussed here: “ethnic identity fails to predict a unique type of political behavior. It is worth stressing that the process of ethnic defection is extremely consequential even when the numbers of defectors remain relatively small. This result is because ethnic identity ceases to be a reliable indicator of pro-ethnic rebel behavior. Accordingly, ethnic rebels are forced to resort to violence against members of their own ethnic group, so as to deter further defection. The resulting intraethnic violence undermines the ethnic rebels’ claim that they represent the true will of the entire group. In short, ethnic defection matters, because it destroys precisely those elements that make ethnic identity so important for collective action in the first place. As a result, many ethnic civil wars, namely those where ethnic defection takes place, turn into contests for the loyalty of the population and resemble nonethnic civil wars” (Kalyvas 2008, 1055). This conclusion completely refutes Johnson’s point based on hardened ethnicities. While Johnson argues that there is a hard line drawn between two warring groups based on ethnicity to further support his position on partitions, Kalyvas’ conclusions show there is major retaliation against defectors after partitions. He introduces the idea that wars destroy the very elements that influence ethnic identity. Therefore, it would be hard to build a foundation for a warring group on a fractured identity.
Kalyvas suggests instead that, “Organizations, as opposed to groups, are the appropriate unit of analysis” (Kalyvas 2008, 1063). Organizations serve as a more accurate representation of an individual’s beliefs and motivations. They also have a more established structure with which to build a base for opposing groups. Where Kalyvas’ research falters is the severe lack of cases his study includes. It is therefore not generalizable and cannot be assumed applicable to drawing conclusions about more cases than the one he studied.
This lack of cases is contrasted in Fearon and Laitin’s Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. Their quantitative study involved a large N (100+ cases). Although lacking the in-depth knowledge like Kalyvas, their study is more applicable to the large-scale. Fearon and Laitin establish their positions through the use of regression analysis to estimate the relationship between variables. The relationship they study is of probable causes of civil war and the possibility of an outbreak of civil war related to those variables.
As previously mentioned, Johnson claimed that ethnicity hardens during wartime. Therefore, he implies it cannot be the root of the problem. However, Fearon and Laitin share the same idea of a hardened concept of identity with Johnson. To refute this point, one could mention that political actors create these groups and force the hardening of ethnicity. It is questionable why one would split groups based on this characteristic when it is accepted that hardening comes out during civil wars and not before. What Johnson and Fearon and Laitin do not consider is that correlation does not equal causation. Fearon and Laitin also include findings but offer no explanation as to how or why those findings occurred leaving much analysis to be desired.
The presence of ethnicity does not seem to affect the likelihood of a civil war. Evidence seems to suggest that civil wars with the ethnic attribute are no more or less prone than conflicts devoid of ethnic issues. Ultimately, it can be concluded that the ethnic factor in a civil war has no effect on dispute initiation. This point, although contested by Johnson, is supported by Kalyvas and Fearon and Laitin. Although they do not all define ethnicity in the same way, it can be confidently said that ethnicity does not play as big of a role in the outbreak of civil war as Johnson proposes.