Violence as a Method of Attitudinal Polarization

• In Event: Poster Session: Conflict Processes I

Abstract

What explains the geographic distribution and severity of violence during an ethnic civil war? While sociological and demographic explanations are common, the political determinants of wartime violence patterns have received less attention. I argue that the distribution of pre-war support for multi-ethnic politics helps explain the distribution of wartime violence, with communities that exhibit high support for multi-ethnic politics experiencing more violence than comparable, low-support communities. This is because ethnic elites employ violence strategically in order to polarize attitudes along ethnic lines and increase support for ethnic exclusivism. Generating such support is most urgent in localities that were least receptive to ethnic appeals pre-war. Employing pre-war electoral and wartime violence data from Bosnia, I find strong support for my argument. The findings hold across a number of robustness checks, including the use of various measures of violence severity.

Author

• Dino Hadzic, Trinity College, Dublin