Does discrimination breed grievances—and do grievances breed violence? New evidence from an analysis of religious minorities in developing countries

Abstract

Since Ted Gurr's Why Men Rebel it has become conventional wisdom that (relative) deprivation creates grievances and that these grievances in turn lead to intergroup violence. Recently, studies have yielded evidence that the exclusion of ethnic groups is a substantial conflict risk. From a theoretical angle, the relationship is straightforward and is likely to unfold as a causal chain that runs from objective discrimination to (subjective) grievances and then to violence. We test this proposition with unique group-format data on 433 religious minorities in the developing world from 1990 to 2008. While religious discrimination indeed increases the likelihood of grievances, neither grievances nor discrimination are connected to violence. This finding is supported by a Management and Peace Science ; 34 (2017), 3. -S. 217-239 https://dx.doi.org/10.1177 large number of robustness checks. Conceptually, discrimination and grievances can take very different shapes and opportunity plays a much bigger role than any grievance-based approach expects.

Introducing the “Religious Minorities at Risk” Dataset

“…Unlike for ethnic groups (Cederman, Wimmer, & Min, 2010), previous research cannot find a straightforward answer to these questions and is unable to establish a causal chain running from deprivation to conflict (e.g. Basedau, Fox, Pierskalla, Strüver, & Vüllers, 2017;Fox, Bader, & McClure, 2017). There are theoretical and methodological explanations for this failure.…”

The correlates of religion and state: an introduction

“…(Fox 2015) I discuss this theory in more detail in my contribution to this volume. My analysis of RAS2 continued to address the issues I addressed using RAS1 but I added a focus on the causes of religious discrimination (Basedau et al 2017;Fox 2016;Akbaba 2014, 2015;Fox, Bader, and McClure 2017).…”

Conceptualizing the Religious Dimensions of Armed Conflicts: A Response to “Shrouded: Islam, War, and Holy War in Southeast Asia”

“…1 An important way of capturing the religious dimension is to examine the extent to which there are specific religious characteristics or biases on the side of the governments (Grim and Finke 2006), influencing the risk of interstate conflicts (Henne 2012) as well as intrastate ones (Saiya and Scime 2015). In particular, measurements of government-sanctioned religious discrimination is an important area of research (Akbaba and Taydas 2011;Basedau et al 2015). Thus, as this illustrates, there are multiple methods for measuring religious content that ultimately complement each other.…”

“…In particular, measurements of government‐sanctioned religious discrimination is an important area of research (Akbaba and Taydas ; Basedau et al. ). Thus, as this illustrates, there are multiple methods for measuring religious content that ultimately complement each other.…”