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November 1994

Unclassified

Editors Note:

We are pleased to publish in the issue of Commentary a summary of Dr. T.R. Gurr's Presidential Address to the International Studies Association Annual Meeting held on 1 April 1994 in Washington, D.C., reproduced here with the kind permission of the author and the editors of International Studies Quarterly.

Dr. Ted Robert Gurr is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar of the University's Centre for International Development and Conflict Management. His 16 books and research monographs on civil conflict, crime and public order, and democratization are internationally recognized as an outstanding contribution to the study of conflict and conflict resolution. He is currently President (1994-1995) of the International Studies Association.

In 1986 Dr. Gurr began the Minorities at Risk project, which focuses on the political mobilization of ethnic groups and how governments respond to them. One of the main concerns of the present article is to provide a coherent explanation for the "apparent explosion of conflicts centered on ethnicity", particularly since the end of the Cold War. One theory holds that "tribal" conflicts are a sudden release of those previously held in check during the bi-polar superpower tensions of the last 40 years; another, that "ethnic identities are perhaps more fundamental and persistent than loyalties to larger social units".

Readers will perhaps be surprised at Dr. Gurr's conclusions not only as to the causes, but also the venues and the solutions to these conflicts.

Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.

The resurgence of conflicts centered on ethnic claims in the Balkans and the Caucasus, Africa and South Asia has provoked renewed debate among social scientists about the nature and significance of ethnicity in contemporary societies. From the 1950s through the 1970s it was widely thought that economic development, the migration of rural people to cities and growing literacy would lead to the creation of complex and integrated societies throughout the world. Modernization theory made a specific prediction about ethnic identities: greater political and economic interaction among people and the growth of communication networks would break down peoples' "parochial" identities with ethnic kindred and replace them with loyalties to larger communities like Canada or the European Community or an emerging Pan-Africa.

Of course it has not worked out that way, and the apparent explosion of conflicts centered on ethnicity has led to a scramble for theoretical explanations. One view is that ethnic identities are "primordial", perhaps even genetically based, and therefore more fundamental and persistent than loyalties to larger social units. A contrary view is that ethnic identities become significant when they are invoked by entrepreneurial political leaders pursuing material and political benefits for a group or region. Neither interpretation offers a wholly convincing explanation for the increase in ethnic claims during the 1980s and early 1990s, however. If ethnic identities are "primordial," why are they so much more in evidence now than at mid-century? If ethnic identities and claims are a matter of choice, how have the political opportunity structures of the world changed so that appeals to interests defined in ethnic terms are instrumentally more effective now than they were several decades ago?

I do not propose to resolve this theoretical debate, but to examine it in the larger context of global change. My particular concern is not the nature of ethnic identification per se, but ethnopolitical conflicts in which groups that define themselves using ethnic criteria make claims on behalf of their collective interests against the state, or against other political actors.

The Minorities at Risk Project

My understanding of these issues, and of ethnopolitical conflict generally, has been shaped by seven years' research on the Minorities at Risk project. The project began as an effort to update a global roster of politically significant ethnic groups. A total of 233 groups were identified that in the 1980s met one or both of two general criteria.

(1) The group collectively suffers, or benefits from, systematic discriminatory treatment vis-à-vis other groups in the country or countries in which it resides. Nearly 80% of the groups in the study were included because of differential status due to past or present economic discrimination or political discrimination, or both.

(2) The group is the focus of political mobilization and action in defence or promotion of the group's self-defined interests. The histories of each of 233 groups' involvement in political action were coded from 1945 through 1989. All but 27 took some action during this period to assert their group interests, either in the political arena or against other communal groups; the others were included because of patterns of discrimination.

Back to the Future - Main Findings of the Minorities at Risk Study

A good deal of speculative nonsense has been written about the supposed explosion of "tribal" conflict in the post-Cold War era. The long-run trend extrapolated by some observers is political fragmentation of the global system. The risk is that new, ethnically more homogenous states will continue to proliferate, and power will be devolved within existing states as more and more of their people win political autonomy short of independence. Tribal wars of independence and vengeance will lead to a mounting toll of humanitarian disasters and refugees in need of international assistance. The evidence discussed below should temper the enthusiasm with which these projections are being endorsed and condemned. Observations which can be sustained include the following:

• The increase in serious ethnopolitical conflict since the late 1980s is a continuation of a trend that first became evident in the 1960s. The deconstruction of the Soviet bloc nudged the trend upward but did not create it.

• The principal issue of the most intense new conflicts is contention for state power among communal groups in Third-world societies. The end of the Cold War is implicated in some of these conflicts: they intensified in Afghanistan and Angola after the superpowers disengaged from what at the outset were left-right conflicts. Most others occur in the weak and economically stagnant states of Africa south of the Sahara.

• New secessionist conflicts are confined almost entirely to the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states. In other world regions such conflicts have declined in salience and intensity since the 1980s.

• Power transitions within states have been the principal, immediate condition of civil and communal warfare, past and present. Two kinds of power transitions have increased in the aftermath of the Cold War: 20 new or redesigned states have come into existence; and a number of states are experimenting with new democratic institutions. Much of the upsurge in communal conflict has occurred precisely in these states, and as a direct consequence of the fact that institutional change has opened up opportunities by which communal groups can more openly pursue their objectives.

• Communal conflicts that occur across civilizational and religious fault lines have in the past proved to be more intense than others and probably will continue to be so in future. But civilizational cleavages serve mainly to structure and reinforce contention that is concerned mainly with issues of group power and status. Of the 10 "civilizational" conflicts that began after 1987, 6 followed power transitions and the other 4, including the Intifada and Hindu-Muslim rivalries in South Asia, evolved from long-standing ethnonationalist disputes.

There is no strong global force leading toward the further fragmentation of the state system. Ethnonational contention has characterized the world system since the 1960s and has led to the breakup of four multinational states: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Ethiopia. Few others remain.

The most likely scenario is an increase in communal contention about access to power in new, weak, heterogenous states like those of Africa: Sudan and Angola are archetypes, Zaire is on the brink. Though these conflicts will unquestionably continue to pose severe humanitarian problems, they also are capable of being contained, redirected and transformed through constructive international action. These situations are foreseeable, concentrated in a few world regions and potentially susceptible to management by regional and international actors—a topic examined more fully in the final part of this paper.

Assumptions

My assumptions can be summarized briefly. The greater the competition and inequalities among groups in heterogenous societies, the greater the salience of ethnic identities and the greater the likelihood of open conflict. When open conflict does occur, it is likely to intensify both perceptions of difference among contending groups and perceptions of common interest within each group. And the longer open conflict persists, and the more intense it becomes, the stronger and more exclusive are group identities.

Systemic Change and the Resurgence of Ethnopolitical Conflict

Some observers have drawn a causal connection between the end of the Cold War and the escalation of ethnopolitical conflict. The Minorities at Risk data shows that ethnopolitical conflicts were relatively common, and increased steadily, throughout the Cold War. Table 2 shows that the greatest absolute and proportional increase in numbers of groups involved in serious ethnopolitical conflicts occurred between the 1960s and the 1970s, from 36 groups to 55. From the 1980s to the early 1990s the tally increased only by eight, from 62 to 70. Moreover, ongoing ethnopolitical conflicts that began after 1987 are not appreciably more intense than those that began earlier. The ongoing conflicts that began before 1987 have led to more deaths but fewer refugees; the recent ones thus far have been less deadly on average, but have caused greater dislocation of populations.

TABLE 1.

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¹ Tabulations for 1945-1989 are based on analysis of 233 politically-active groups in the Minorities at Risk database. Tabulations for 1993-94 are based on current research. Numbers of contending ethnopolitical groups for 1993-94 (Table 1) are larger than numbers of conflicts (Table 2) because some of the latter, especially in Asia and Africa, have multiple contenders.

² Including the USSR, Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

³ Including North Africa, Turkey, Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

⁴ Including South, Southeast, and Pacific Asia.

⁵ Excluding the Maghreb, Libya, and Egypt; including South Africa.

TABLE 2.

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¹ Codes for type of conflict as of 1993-1994 :

War -intense, protracted conflict between organized contenders, at least one of them an ethnopolitical group.

MLIC -low-intensity conflicts with militarized violence, including armed attacks, local rebellions, and terrorist campaigns.

LIC -low-intensity conflicts with little or no militarized violence, including serious rioting, communal clashes and pogroms, and sporadic terrorism.

REP -serious disputes in which most violence is a consequence of state repression.

TABLE 3.

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The Collapse of the Bloc System and Ethnic Fragmentation

One explanation for the rise of ethnopolitical conflict focuses on the localized consequences of the deconstruction of the bloc system. The emphasis is on the ethnic fragmentation that follows the decentralization of systemic power; the catch phrase used by some observers is "tribalism". A number of states, including the non-Russian successor republics of the USSR, have been weakened by the loss of political and material support from the superpowers. This means greater political opportunities for ethnopolitical contenders to seek autonomy or a greater share of power. Such challenges often are reinforced by the expansionist objectives of adjoining states that are now freer to encourage ethnic kindred and co-religionists to rebellion. One specific, testable implication of this argument is that ethnopolitical conflicts can be expected to be concentrated in the new states of what was formerly the Second World. Of the 23 serious conflicts that began after 1987, however, only 6 are in Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states; 9 are in Africa, the world region least affected by Cold War rivalries. A second testable implication is that communally based contention for state power can be expected to increase in the aftermath of systemic change, a thesis that is considered below.

A second interpretation emphasizes the persistence of primordial identities behind the facade of state-centered nationalism. The argument builds on the fact that few contemporary states are ethnically homogeneous, then makes the more problematic assumption that ethnocultural identities are more fundamental for most people than identification with a state: the people of Belgium are Flemish or Walloons first, Belgians second or possibly not at all.

Three analytically-distinct orientations toward state power and toward other communal groups can be distinguished among the protagonists in serious ethnopolitical disputes:

Ethnonationalism is the central issue that motivates proportionally large, regionally concentrated peoples with a history of organized political autonomy. Their main political objective is "exit," i.e., they proactively pursue independent statehood or extensive regional autonomy. Of the 233 politicized communal groups included in the Minorities at Risk study, 81 pursued ethnonational objectives; their conflicts were on average more intense than those in which other issues were manifest and increased markedly in numbers and magnitude from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Indigenous rights are the preoccupation of conquered descendants of original inhabitants of a country whose societies were decentralized, communitarian, and based on a stewardship relationship with their environment. Their most common objective is "autonomy," sought as a means for the protection of their lands, resources, and culture from the inroads of state-builders and developers. Some indigenous peoples take a step beyond autonomy to seek independent statehood; conflicts involving these groups are cross-classified as involving both issues, indigenous rights and ethnonationalism. Eighty-three of the 233 groups in the Minorities at Risk study were indigenous peoples; their conflicts were of lesser magnitude than ethnonationalist ones, but they increased more rapidly in numbers and aggregate magnitude in the 1970s and 1980s than conflicts concerned with any other issue.

Contention for power is the principal issue in conflict among communal contenders. These are culturally distinct peoples, tribes or clans in heterogenous societies who are locked in rivalries about the distribution of or access to state power. Because communal contenders often have a regional base, their leaders sometimes have the choice of opting out; thus groups that seek greater access to state power in one set of circumstances may pursue ethnonationalist objectives in another. Several current conflicts in which both issues are salient are cross-classified. Sixty-six politically-active communal contenders were identified in the Minorities at Risk study, mainly African.

TABLE 4.

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The distinctions among these three political issues are used to classify the 50 conflicts and compare their numbers and magnitudes, with the results shown in table 4. Ethnonationalism-nationalism is the most common issue, characterizing 31 conflicts; contention for power is the second most common (18 conflicts); indigenous rights are salient in 16 conflicts. Comparison of the traits of conflicts that began before and after 1987 tests the general plausibility of the ethnic fragmentation and power contention arguments. In absolute numbers of post-1987 conflicts, nationalism and power contention were of equal importance: each was the central issue in 11 new conflicts, indigenous rights were at issue in four. In proportional terms, however, nationalism and indigenous rights were more important sources of new conflicts before 1987 than later, whereas power contention increased sharply in relative frequency. It also is evident that power contention was and is the source of much more severe conflicts than ethnonationalism or indigenous rights. The power-contention conflicts that began after 1987 have, on average, more than 10 times the fatalities and refugees of the new indigenous rights conflicts, and are associated with about 50 % more deaths and refugees than new ethnonational conflicts.

This comparative evidence, coupled with examination of the specifics of new ethnopolitical conflicts in each region, leads to three general observations:

First, tendencies toward ethnic fragmentation have characterized world politics since the 1960s and have long been evident to observers who were not preoccupied by Cold-War issues. Serious new conflicts generated by aspirations for independence and autonomy have thus far been confined almost entirely to the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states.

Second, power contention is the most deadly and disruptive issue generating both continuing and new ethnopolitical conflicts. Two protracted communal conflicts were directly affected by the disintegration of the bloc system: in Afghanistan and Angola, ideological depolarization and the cessation of superpower involvement brought old communal rivalries to the surface and gave new impetus or direction to conflicts which began in Cold-War rivalries. Most other communal conflicts, old and new, are in Africa and are manifestations of non-ideological disputes.

Lastly, indigenous rights is subsiding as an issue generating serious ethnopolitical conflict. The only deadly new conflict to make explicit use of the symbolism of the global indigenous rights movement began in the Mexican state of Chiapas in January 1994. It seems unlikely that indigenous peoples will become involved in protracted and deadly conflict in the near future, unless they are mobilized to fight wars of independence as in Kurdistan and the uplands of Burma, or revolutionary wars as in Guatemala and Peru.

Political Transitions and Ethnopolitical Conflict

Changes in the power structure of the global system, emerging fault lines among civilizations, and the impoverishment of entire regions shape the larger context within which ethnopolitical conflicts emerge and persist. Within a narrower context of political changes at the state level, Barbara Harff proposes that in societies characterized by sharp preexisting internal cleavages, such upheavals tend to intensify conflict between regimes and national minorities and often lead to an exaggerated emphasis on national identity followed by targeting of minorities as scapegoats. Helen Fein's comparative evidence shows that most post-1960 genocides and politicides were responses to communal rebellions which were, in turn, reactions to state policies of discrimination and political exclusion aimed at communal groups.

Specific predictions that follow are that, in societies with preexisting communal cleavages, state formation and defeat in war both are likely to be followed by what is now fashionably called ultranationalism, increased conflict among communal contenders and victimization of minorities. Another line of argument links revolutionary changes of power to increased conflict. States that have undergone revolutionary political change are much more likely to be involved in international conflict. Closer to the present point, revolutionary transitions open up opportunities for new contenders and also usually bring to power leaders who have the means and inclination to respond violently to internal challengers.

A third relevant line of argument focuses on the consequences of democratization for ethnic and communal conflict. Transitions to democracy contribute in complex ways to ethnic and communal conflict. Some ethnopolitical contenders use democratic openings to justify protest and rebellion as struggles for individual and collective rights. And some ultranationalists who have been elected to power in the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states use similar kinds of rhetoric to justify restrictions on the rights of communal minorities in the name of the "democratic will" of the dominant nationality. The general prediction is that ethnopolitical conflicts should be more numerous and intense in newly democratic and quasi-democratic states than in institutionalized democracies or autocracies.

Some effects of power transitions on ethnopolitical conflicts are examined in table 5. Half of the 50 conflicts followed in the wake of power transitions, including 9 that began within five years of state establishment and 11 within three years of revolutionary seizures of power (including coups by radical reformers). The category "began following any political transition" includes five additional conflicts: four began as resistance to the forcible incorporation of a territory by another state, the fifth was the Shi'i rebellion that followed Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War.

Numbers of power-transition conflicts declined between the two periods, from 15 before 1987 to 10 thereafter. The most striking comparison, though, is that ethnopolitical conflicts which follow power transitions generally are more intense than others: this is true of pre-1987 conflicts in newly established states, and all types of power-transition conflicts that occurred after 1987. On average, the 10 post-1987 power-transition conflicts were responsible for twice as many deaths and refugees as the 13 others.

Harff's contention that political upheaval is linked specifically to gross human rights violations also is strongly supported by the data: 13 of the 50 serious ethnopolitical conflicts have led to deliberate killings by state agents of large numbers of communal victims, thus meeting her definition of genocide and politicide. Nine of these conflicts were preceded by power transitions, only four were not.

TABLE 5.

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This comparative inquiry concludes with a look at the correlations between type of political regime and the occurrence and severity of ethnopolitical conflicts. Table 6 shows that half of the 50 conflicts began under autocratic regimes, contrasted with only 8 in democratic regimes; India accounts for 4 of the latter. Arguments about the effects of transitions to democracy on ethnopolitical conflict are supported: although transitional regimes are relatively few in number, one-third of all serious ethnopolitical conflicts began in such regimes.

TABLE 6.

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In summary, the power transition explanations of the onset of serious ethnopolitical conflict are more strongly and consistently supported than systemic explanations predicated on the increasing global salience of civilizational or religious cleavages.¹ Nearly two-thirds of the conflicts—18 of the early ones, 14 of the later ones—began either in transitional regimes or after power shifts. Six of the recent conflicts erupted in the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states; four followed abrupt shifts in power in established states and four others began in established states whose regimes were transitional between democracy and autocracy. Among the power-transition conflicts are most of those on which global attention has been fixated in recent years: civil wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Azerbaijan, genocidal massacres in Burundi, clan fighting in Somalia, communal warfare in South Africa. The average magnitude of these 15 recent power-transition conflicts is 2.96, significantly greater than the 2.34 average for eight recent non-power transition conflicts.

Can Serious Ethnopolitical Conflicts be Managed Successfully?

There are at least three general reasons why communally-based conflicts are more resistant to settlement than other kinds of conflicts: (1) Some of the key issues are non-material. Ethnopolitical conflicts are fought not just about resources or power, but about protecting group status, culture, and identity. Identity and belief are non-negotiable. On the other hand, the means by which they are protected can be and have been the subject of creative compromises. (2) Most communal groups lack effective governing structures. Ethnopolitical movements can energize group members for sustained collective action but have little capacity for political control. Therefore settlements are difficult to reach and often challenged violently by factions that choose to fight on. On the other hand, once authentic representatives of communal groups establish their own political structures, or gain regular access to state power, they acquire the authority and resources to restrain challengers within the group. (3) Regional and global strategies for mediating and regulating ethnopolitical conflict have been slow to develop. The development of techniques of preventive diplomacy and peacemaking suited to ethnopolitical rivalries was long been handicapped by two systemic facts. One was the Cold War rivalry, the other was the doctrine of unqualified sovereignty which inhibited international and regional agreement about interfering even in the most deadly of communal wars.

Guidelines for Managing Ethnopolitical Conflict

The quest of disadvantaged peoples for greater autonomy or access to power does not necessarily lead to protracted and violent conflict. It is unrealistic to think that conflicts over these issues can be resolved for all time, but there is much evidence that they can be managed or transformed to less destructive forms. The first general principle is that management of ethnopolitical conflict requires balancing the interests of communal groups and state elites. Second, ethnopolitical disputes escalate into protracted communal conflicts usually due to failures of leadership and political imagination on both sides combined with international inattentiveness.

Four observations based on the comparative evidence can be offered in support of these assertions.

Ethnopolitical conflict usually begins with limited protests and clashes that only gradually escalate into sustained violence. The Minorities at Risk project tracked the evolution of political action by twenty-four minorities between the 1950s and 1980s, eighteen of which eventually used violent protest or terrorism. An average of thirteen years elapsed between the emergence of political movements based on these groups and the first occurrence of violence. Government responses in the early stages, in these and other conflicts, usually are critical in whether and how escalation occurs. The government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl almost certainly contributed to the escalation of anti-foreign violence in Germany in 1992 by not taking a strong public stand against it at the outset. In marked contrast is the response of the Mexican government to the rebellion in the state of Chiapas on New Years's Day 1994. Within a month the government moved to negotiate with the movement's leaders — reportedly the first such Mexican response to a local rebellion in this century.

The Western democracies have been relatively successful in devising policies of regional autonomy, integration and pluralism that have kept most ethnic protest from escalating into rebellion. These countries experienced a one-third decline in magnitudes of ethnopolitical conflict in the 1980s, the only set of countries that ran counter to the long-run global trend of increasing ethnopolitical conflict. I am not dismissing the seriousness of current ethnic conflicts of Western societies: the point is that by a world standard of comparison, protest and racial harassment are far less destructive of human life and institutions than communal rebellions and massacres; far more susceptible to accommodation. And policies of affirmative action and multiculturalism are much more likely to contribute to civil peace in multiethnic societies than historical patterns of segregation, involuntary assimilation, and suppression of autonomy movements. It is virtually inconceivable, for example, that the federal government of Canada would fight a civil war to keep Quebec part of Canada. Democratic governments like those of Canada, and of Czechoslovakia in 1992, would rather switch than fight.

Negotiated regional autonomy has proved to be an effective antidote for ethnonational wars of secession in Western and Third World states. Basque demands for independence were largely undermined in 1980 when the new democratic government of Spain offered autonomy to the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions. The Basque case is one of seven identified in the Minorities at Risk study in which violent secessionist conflicts were more or less successfully settled through negotiated autonomy arrangements. Most of the "small winners" have been Third-world peoples like the Miskitos in Nicaragua and the Nagos and Tripuras in India. In several of these instances, including the Basque conflict, settlements were rejected by factions that continued to fight, but the intensity of conflict declined markedly. These successes can be contrasted with failed attempts of government to end civil wars through autonomy arrangements, for example, in Sudan (1972), Iraq (1974), and Sri Lanka (1987). In the first instance, the Sudanese government eventually (in 1983) defected from the agreement and civil war resumed; in the last two, most rebels rejected from the outset autonomy arrangements that were unilaterally implemented by governments in efforts to defuse conflicts.

All six serious ethnopolitical conflicts of the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states have been contained, mostly as a result of regional and international intervention. UN diplomatic and peacekeeping efforts ended serious fighting in Croatia in 1992 and, belatedly, now seem to have taken effect in Bosnia. Concerted regional and US efforts also have succeeded, thus far, in preventing civil war in Macedonia. The Georgian government has accepted a Russian military presence aimed at discouraging further ethnic and political warfare. Since June 1992 the Russians, Georgians and Ossetians have carried out a largely successful trilateral peacekeeping operation in South Ossetia. And in March 1994 negotiators announced a settlement of the most protracted conflict in the region, between Azerbaijan and the Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabahk enclave. Scattered fighting continues and may intensify in these and other ethnic regions. The general trend, though, is an unmistakable shift throughout the region from ethnic warfare toward accommodation. Another positive sign is that the two largest states in the region, Russia and Ukraine, have thus far steered clear of provocative policies and military actions that would intensify internal and trans-border ethnic conflicts.

International Strategies to Restrain Future Ethnonationalism-political Conflicts

A great deal of attention has focused on designing policies that will forestall and contain future ethnopolitical conflicts. The benchmark for evolving international doctrine is the UN Secretary-General's Agenda for Peace, presented on 17 June 1992 to the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Agenda focuses attention on threats to international security arising from "ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife" and outlines four kinds of responses: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peace-keeping, and post-conflict peace-building that addresses "the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice, and political oppression". The UN's capacity to implement the Agenda has been seriously questioned because of strategic and political errors in the Bosnia and Somalia operations. The capacity of the international system to sustain these kinds of activities continues to depend on the political will of member states of the UN and their willingness to provide resources. Nonetheless there is a compelling collective interest in anticipating and responding to emerging-ethnopolitical conflicts. Following are six issues that will have to be addressed as part of the global strategy of moderating ethnopolitical conflicts.

• International law and policy about the rights of communal groups to autonomy need to be clarified. What groups, under what conditions, have a right to internationally-supported secession or autonomy? Doctrines of individual rights are well-developed; doctrines about collective rights are not.

• International law and policy about protecting rights of communal groups within states should be consistently enforced. Communal minorities supposedly have the right to individual and collective existence and pursuit of their cultural interests free of political repression. Those rights ought to be consistently monitored and their systematic violation should lead predictably to diplomatic pressures and, in severe cases, to sanctions.

• Systems should be established for gathering information about and issuing early warning of impending communal conflicts and humanitarian crises. Researchers, activists, and international officials have widely endorsed the objective of early warning systems. The hard work needed to implement the idea has just begun: what's required is information networking, developing and testing of early-warning models, and establishing channels to communicate risk assessments and warnings to those in positions to act on them.

• Guidelines and instrumentalities for preventive diplomacy in cases of emerging ethnopolitical conflict need to be established and widely employed — by the UN, by regional organizations, by the United States and other powers. This means using traditional diplomacy directed at states, and providing mediation. It also means developing new mechanisms that give representatives of communal groups incentives to enter into internationally-brokered negotiations and agreements.

• The peoples and governments of the South need to be actively engaged in identifying and responding to emerging ethnopolitical crises. The Cold War may be over but there remains strong resistance among countries of the South to preventive action by the United Nations, which is sometimes seen as the agent of hegemonic Northern interests. One alternative is to strengthen the will and capacity of regional organizations for preventive diplomacy and peacemaking: the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has long played a low-key role of this sort, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has recently increased its capacity for preventive diplomacy. A parallel strategy is to involve nongovernmental organizations of the South, for example those concerned with human rights, democratization, and women's issues, in efforts at conflict prevention.

• Finally, international doctrine, early warnings, and the practice of preventive diplomacy need to be backed up with established doctrines of humanitarian intervention. This emphatically includes the resort to force in cases of gross and persistent violations of human rights. The Allies did so in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, but only after many thousands died and hundreds of thousands fled to Turkey and Iran. Somalis are no longer starving to death nor killing one another in clan rivalries. And the siege of Sarajevo has been lifted. The lesson is that, once ethnopolitical conflict escalates into intense warfare, international political strategies of reestablishing peace and security are not likely to work unless backed by the credible threat of force.

These six issues transcend the division between research and policy formation. All of them deserve sustained, analytic attention from the global network of scholars concerned with international studies.

¹ Please see the full text, International Studies Quarterly, September 1994, for Dr. Gurr's test and evaluation of these emerging theories in light of the data.[Return]

The views expressed herein are those of the author, who may be contacted by writing to :

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