Ethnicity, Rivalry and Territory: The Interactive Impact of Ethnicity on International Conflict.

Ethnic issues have been cited by many scholars to increase the likelihood of international violence and/or conflict between states. However, this literature fails to explicitly analyze two key factors that have consistently been shown to influence conflict: territorial disputes and rivalry. Given that territory and rivalry are likely to have additional connections to ethnicity, it is essential to explore the possible interactive effects of these variables on conflict. In this paper, it is argued that the direct effects of ethnicity on conflict are rather modest, but that ethnic issues interact with both rivalry and territorial disputes to increase the likelihood of conflict. Further, an ethnicity-rivalry-territorial dispute interaction is expected to be a particularly war prone combination. To test these hypotheses, the Minorities at Risk dataset is used to identify disadvantaged ethnic groups with cross-national ethnic ties to neighboring states. The analysis provides support for many of the propositions presented in the paper, but also suggests the need for further research in order to fully understand the complex relationship between ethnicity, territorial disputes, rivalry and conflict. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]