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Despite the popularly held belief that globalization has led to a rise in ethnic conflict, there has generally been a paucity of empirical evidence offered to support this view. This article seeks to investigate the relationship between globalization & ethnic conflict, specifically the degree to which globalization (1) heightens the propensity of politicized ethnic groups to make political demands for autonomy & independence & (2) promotes communal violence. These relationships are tested using data from 102 minority groups across 34 different developing countries. However, rather than simply examine the bivariate relationship between levels of globalization & ethnic politics, this article employs a multivariate technique (ordinal logistic regression) that evaluates the effect of globalization along with other variables, such as democratization, sociocultural variables, & the state of the economy. In general, the findings suggest that globalization is not related to ethnic conflict, although globalization does appear to be related to ethnic protest. 6 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

One of the most important theories of ethnic conflict focuses on the competition hypothesis: conflict occurs between ethnic groups when they interact more rather than when they are kept separated. If true, this theory implies that attempts at desegregation will necessarily be associated with ethnic conflict and violence. The author presents a formal model that suggests that the apparent competition effect uncovered in the empirical literature may, in fact, be spurious. Ethnic conflict can appear to increase with competition, even in the case where individuals are less likely to attack individuals of other ethnicities than members of their own ethnicity. A consideration of some alterations in the basic model suggests that the result is robust. An exploratory exercise shows that after controlling for the selection bias problems involved in studying ethnic conflict, the predicted competition effects disappear.

I critically examine the existing literature on the security dilemma in ethnic conflict, thus laying part of the foundation for constructing a dynamic and integrative theory of ethnic conflict. I show that many attempts to apply the security dilemma to the understanding of ethnic conflict have been based on an imprecise and often mistaken understanding of the concept. I then emphasise that the security dilemma theory and the broader spiral model constitute a dynamic, versatile and powerful theory of strategic interaction that captures some general dynamics leading to the outbreak of war. As such, the security dilemma theory and the broader spiral model, when properly understood, can serve as part of the foundation of a dynamic and integrative theory of ethnic conflict, and such a theory will be able to integrate many diverse understandings of ethnic conflict from different schools of International Relations (IR) theory. I show the feasibility and the utility of such a theory. Adapted from the source document.