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Article: Ethnic civil wars: securing the post-conflict peace.(reversing the trend: ETHNIC CONFLICT)
- Article from:
- Harvard International Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Harvard International Relations Council, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Present discourse on ethnic conflict is grounded in common sense and advocacy that together form a received wisdom with which everybody is familiar. The task of analytic and quantitative research is to bring us beyond this received wisdom: to discover whether there are counterintuitive behavioral relationships that might be helpful for developing policy.
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The phrase "ethnic conflict" hovers between description and explanation. As a description of the large scale organized violence that besets many low-income countries, it is unexceptional. As an explanation, it is radically inadequate. Most societies are ethnically diverse. Where ...