Democracy, Ethnic Fragmentation, and Internal Conflict: Confused Theories, Faulty Data, and the "Crucial Case" of Papua New Guinea

Democracy, Ethnic Fragmentation, and Internal Conºict Benjamin Reilly Confused Theories, Faulty Data, and the “Crucial Case” of Papua New Guinea International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 162–185© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 162 Benjamin Reilly is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. His most recent book is Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conºict Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 1. See Renée de Nevers, “Democratization and Ethnic Conºict,” in Michael Brown, ed., Ethnic Conºict and International Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). 2. This process has naturally encouraged a considerable literature dealing with democratic transitions and their consequences, and the relationship between institutional choices and the consolidation of democracy. See, for example, Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions to Democracy: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988); Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Asia (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989); Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989); Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, rev. ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Larry Diamond and Mark F. Plattner, eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy : Towards Consolidation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Two countervailing themes have dominated world politics over the past decade: the continuing spread of democratic government and the explosion of intercommunal ethnic violence around the globe. In many cases, rising levels of internal conºict, particularly ethnic conºict, have accompanied transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy.1 The collapse of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia has resulted in a threefold increase in the number of democratic regimes around the world.2 Despite recent backsliding in a number of regions, major transitions to democracy continue to occur in pivotal states such as Indonesia, Nigeria, and Russia. At the same time, however, the world has witnessed a change in the nature of armed conºict, toward intrastate violence and ethnic conºict. Most violent conºicts today occur not between states but within them: Of the 110 major armed conºicts between 1989 and 1999, only 7 were traditional interstate conºicts. The remaining 103 took place within ex- isting states, mostly focused around ethnic issues.3 Between them, these parallel processes of democratization and ethnic conºict have deªned the international agenda in the post–Cold War period. They have also refocused both scholarly and policy attention on the relationship between democratic politics, ethnic group demography, and internal conºict.4 Democracy and Internal Conºict One issue that has not received sufªcient scholarly attention is the effect of different types of ethnic division on political stability and democratic performance . Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, ethnically divided societies tend to be divided in different ways. For example, divided societies can be fragmented into many contending groups (e.g., Papua New Guinea and Tanzania) or balanced between a few similarly sized ones, which can then be broken down into bipolar (e.g., Fiji and Cyprus) or multipolar (e.g., Bosnia) conªgurations. They can feature dominant majorities (e.g., Sri Lanka) or dominant minorities (e.g., Rwanda). Minorities can be based on indigenous or other homeland societies, or on settler diasporas (e.g., Russians in the Baltics). Ethnic groups can be divided by international boundaries between several states (e.g., Kurds) or entirely encapsulated by a single state. Groups can be territorially concentrated or widely dispersed. The nature of the ethnic divide can thus have a signiªcant inºuence on the way...