National Academies Press: OpenBook

International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (2000)

Chapter: Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back

« Previous: Autonomy as a Strategy for Diffusing Conflict
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

13
Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camels Back

David D.Laitin

A Tower of Babel in a single country—in which groups of people speak radically different languages—is all too often portrayed as incendiary. Selig Harrison wrote ominously about the “dangerous decades” that India would face because of its conflicts over language.1 Popular representations of language conflicts in Belgium, Quebec, and Catalonia suggest that cultural issues of this sort unleash irrational passions, leading otherwise sober people away from the realm of civic engagement. And the unjust underpinnings of language laws are often said, even by the combatants themselves, to induce violent rebellion. In late 1999, for example, the leader of the Kurdish rebels in Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, referred to the restrictions on the Kurdish language as the principal motivating factor for the war against Turkish rule. He told the judges:

These kinds of laws give birth to rebellion and anarchy…. The most important of these is the language ban. It provokes this revolt. The way to resolve this problem is to develop Kurdish as a normal language for private conversation and broadcasting.2

That language conflict is one manifestation of a genre of uncivil politics is a principal theme in the iconic “The Integrative Revolution” by Clifford Geertz, where language was included with a set of other “primordial” attachments that were seen as threats to civil society. “When we speak of communalism in India,” Geertz wrote:

we refer to religious contrasts; when we speak of it in Malaya, we are mainly concerned with racial ones, and in the Congo with tribal ones. But the grouping under a common rubric is not simply adventitious; the

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

phenomena referred to are in some way similar. Regionalism has been the main theme in Indonesian disaffection, differences in custom in Moroccan. The Tamil minority in Ceylon is set off from the Sinhalese majority by religion, language, race, region, and social custom; the Shiite minority in Iraq is set off from the dominant Sunnis virtually by an intra-Islamic sectarian difference alone. Pan-national movements in Africa are largely based on race, in Kurdistan, on tribalism; in Laos, the Shan States, and Thailand, on language. Yet all these phenomena, too, are in some sense of a piece. They form a definable field of investigation.3

Language difference is perceived here as one of those symbolic cultural realms in which conflict can all too easily leave the realm of politics and become a threat to peace. In this paper I present powerful evidence to the contrary. Language conflict is not of a piece with religious or other forms of cultural conflict; it has its own particular dynamic. Furthermore, conflict over language is not a prescription for violence. In fact, under certain potentially incendiary conditions, language conflict can help to contain violence.

The empirical source of my challenge to the conventional wisdom is the Minorities at Risk (MAR) database developed by Ted Gurr, which analyzes the status and conflicts of 268 politically active communal groups in 148 different countries. Among the 449 original variables included in the dataset, there are assessments of cultural, economic, and political differences between minority and dominant groups; group grievances and organizational strength; transnational support of minority goals; polity characteristics; and protest, communal violence, and rebellion.4 In the analysis that follows, rebellion of minority groups against the state is the dependent variable. Linguistic differences between minority and dominant groups as well as grievances of minority groups over state language policies are the independent variables.

In the second section of this paper I review the standard theory linking modernization to language conflict, suggesting why conflicts over language issues become incendiary. In the third section I explore the MAR database. The findings are stunning:

  • The greater the language difference between the language of the minority group and that of the dominant group, the lower is the probability of violence.

  • Language grievances held by the minority regarding the official language of the state or the medium of instruction in state schools are not associated with group violence, but there is a weak negative relationship between language grievances and rebellion.

  • Language grievances are strongly associated with increased levels

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

of political protest, suggesting that the remedy for these grievances is more likely to be sought in the political realm rather than by guerrilla action.

  • Language grievances when compounded by religious grievances (which are a reasonable predictor of rebellion) strongly and significantly reduce the magnitude of rebellion. In this sense when language and religious grievances are cumulative, language grievances lower the probability of large-scale violence. Language grievances are, therefore, straws that appear to strengthen the camel’s back.

In the fourth section I formalize an “official language game” and then speculate on why the relationship between language grievance and group violence is not positive. Central mechanisms have to do with the ability of the state to commit to compromises and the inability of minority language entrepreneurs to solve collective-action problems. A theoretical sketch shows why language grievances (as opposed to, say, religious grievances) tend to redirect conflict from the military to the political/ bureaucratic realm. In the fifth section I discuss specific cases—India and Sri Lanka—to show that the statistical and theoretical analyses compel us to see oft-told national histories in new ways. Then I present new data on language policies and their associations with violent conflict and suggest the relevance of my findings for public policy. Policies that are equitable may not, the data show, have equally beneficial consequences in terms of reducing the probability of ethnic violence. To be sure, international intervention may be called for if the implementers of unfair language policies use minority protest as an invitation for all-out war against the minority group, but the unfair language policies themselves are not a threat to peace. I conclude that those interested in peace should encourage the open expression of language grievances and the subsequent political bargaining over the official language and the language of education.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGE TO POLITICAL CONFLICT

In the premodern era language was not politicized. As Ernest Gellner has masterfully demonstrated, in preindustrial times for most people the language of official state business was of no concern.5 Many states with considerable ethnic (especially linguistic) heterogeneity within their boundaries legislated official languages of state business without inducing the ire of their populations. This was no different from establishing a basic law of the state, of establishing uniform weights and measures, and other standardizing practices that Max Weber called “rationalization.”6 Furthermore, these states induced (over much longer periods) the vast majority of the population living within their territories to adopt the state language as their

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

own, often with objections from the church but rarely with strong popular protest.7 This is part of what is today called “nation building.” It was so painless (compared to relations with other states or religious issues) that many political scientists writing in the 1960s erroneously coded early developers as having “natural” boundaries, linking nation and state. Within-state heterogeneity may have been substantial, but the language rationalization aspect of nation building was relatively benign.

Take, for example, the infamous (to contemporary Catalans) Decree of the New Foundation, issued by King Philip V of Spain in 1716. Among other articles in a decree that sought to transform Spain from a decentralized kingdom to one based more on Bourbon principles, it required that all legal papers submitted to the king’s court be written in Spanish. Late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catalan nationalists point to this decree as signaling the death of the Catalan nation. Yet historical reality reveals a quite different picture. A large database of royal court submissions in Spain from the midseventeenth through the mideighteenth centuries shows that Philip V was demanding a practice that had already become normal a quarter century earlier. In the 1660s, when most petitions brought to the king’s attention were requests for payment in recompense for quartering the king’s troops in the war in the Pyrenees against France that ended in 1659, Catalan petitioners hired notaries to translate their requests into Spanish. By the 1680s virtually all such documents were routinely produced in Spanish. It is no wonder that at the time of the New Foundation’s issuance there was hardly a murmur from Catalonia about the burdens that would be imposed on Catalans by having to communicate with the political center in Spanish.8 Although revival movements in Catalonia (as well as Basque Country and Galicia) politicized language in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain, it is historically remarkable how painless rationalization was; and even though nation building was never a full success in Spain,9 by the twentieth century virtually all Spanish citizens were fluent in Spanish.

It is for states that consolidated rule in the modern era that language rationalization became a grave political problem. The source of the problem is in large part due to the fact that, as Gellner has highlighted, in the modern age social mobility and economic success have been dependent on literacy. Thus, clerks replaced peasants as the backbone of modern economies in the industrial age. Furthermore, as states got into the business of providing education, the language of state business became a much broader concern for far more people than when states were not providing such services to individual citizens. Under modern conditions, people have become quite sensitive to the language of state business, and if it is not their own they feel alienated from the state. They feel as well a

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

sense of unfair competition for jobs that are more easily garnered by those whose mother tongue is the state language. Indeed, the classic case of the unraveling of the Habsburg Empire, where peasants from non-German-speaking areas who became urban migrants were most receptive to pleas for the official recognition of their languages, fits this theory to a T.10

Postcolonial states that emerged after World War II, committed to the provision of public education and social welfare, were heavily constrained from following the path of Philip V and other earlier rationalizers. Newly elected political leaders were handed bureaucracies with a vested interest in continued reliance on colonial languages, as fluency in these languages differentiated the high-paid civil servants from their poorly paid brethren in the countryside. Furthermore, these same national leaders were held under suspicion by leaders from regions in which distinct languages were spoken. To impose one indigenous language on all groups would surely threaten the incumbency of any would-be rationalizer. Yet the goals of many postcolonial leaders included superseding the colonial language with an indigenous one. This difficult problem of choosing an official language (used for public administration and as a medium of instruction in schools), under conditions in which greater access to the official language translates into higher prospects for social mobility, has led many analysts to link language conflict with the potentiality of inducing ethnic violence. Nevertheless, their blunt theory is unable to make specific predictions about levels or types of conflict.

THE ROUTE FROM ETHNIC CONFLICT TO ETHNIC VIOLENCE

As I indicated in the Introduction, the standard literature on ethnic conflict often conflates all forms of ethnic contestation as a form of zero-sum intractable conflict, all with equally high potentialities for engendering violence. The leading theories provide a basis for understanding why language gets politicized in the modern era, but links to violent conflict are weakly theorized. In this section, relying on MAR data (supplemented with new variables), I show that language conflict does not translate inexorably into a higher probability of ethnic violence. The dependent variable for this section is REBELLION.11 The scale goes from 0 (no rebellion) through 4 (small-scale guerrilla activity) and up to 7 (protracted civil war). The question I ask is whether language difference, language grievance, or language grievance in association with other factors helps explain the values on REBELLION. To address this question I provide evidence from analysis of the MAR database that supports the four findings announced in the Introduction.

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

Language Difference and Violence

The independent variable describing the level of language difference is LANGSIM. Here I consider the hypothesis that linguistic distance between people living in the same country is a source of tension and that therefore people with different languages cannot easily live together in the same political unit. The MAR database lends some support to this thesis, but its coding on linguistic distance is invalid.12 Recognizing the failures of the MAR indicator to assess linguistic distance, James D.Fearon and I took the world classification of languages, produced by Ethnologue,13 a society of linguists interested in producing versions of the Bible in all languages of the world. Ethnologue linguists rely on linguistic trees, classifying languages by structure, with branch points for language family (e.g., Indo-European from Afro-Asiatic), language groups, and even sub-dialects. LANGSIM has three values depending on whether the language of the minority is the same as the language of the dominant group, the language is different but of the same family of languages (the initial branching point in the Ethnologue codings), or the language is of a different family.14

Linguistic difference alone between the dominant and minority groups in a country is not a predictor of intergroup violence. If we correlate LANGSIM with REBELLION, in fact, the trend is opposite what Gurr’s data show and what would be predicted from a theory that cultural difference promotes conflict. In a bivariate relationship between rebellion and linguistic similarity, the correlation is positive (.1359, significant at p=.03). Table 13.1 illustrates this relationship through the comparison of mean scores on REBELLION (here the maximum rebellion scores from 1945 through 1995). In the table we see that the mean score for rebellion is lowest when the groups are from a different language family and highest when the two groups share the same language. Thus, without introducing controls, the data show that greater linguistic similarity raises the probability of violence.

Examination of the list of cases in each of LANGSIM’s categories helps show why an important cultural difference such as language does

TABLE 13.1 Language Similarity and Rebellion (1945–1995): Comparison of Mean Scores on REBELLION

LANGSIM

Mean Value of Rebellion

Number of Cases

Entire population

2.49

244

1. Different family

2.06

111

2. Same family

2.62

93

3. Same language

3.40

40

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

not provoke violent group conflicts. On the one hand, there are many cases where there are vast differences in language but where the conditions do not permit large-scale rebellion. One type includes postindustrial settlers who moved into urban areas and had no territorial base in which to mobilize for military action against the state. These groups differed greatly linguistically from the dominant groups that controlled the state. Another category contains groups living in states ruled by “settler” populations whose language is different from any of the autochthonous groups—their state-building activities achieved success in earlier eras, and they are less likely to face ethnic rebellions in the post-1945 period. Third, former slave groups, many of them classified as having Creole languages, are of a different language family from the dominant groups of their societies, yet they have not been in a position to radically oppose the state in the post-World War II period. Finally, some nomadic groups (the Romani) may well be subject to pogroms but do not have the resources to challenge the state through violent action. They too differ considerably linguistically from the dominant groups in the societies in which they live.

On the other hand, there are many indigenous populations (defined by Gurr as “conquered descendants of original inhabitants of a region who typically live in peripheral regions, practice subsistence agriculture or herding, and have cultures sharply distinct from dominant groups”)15 who speak languages in close proximity to their conquerors yet harbor long-standing grievances and have a rural base to rebel. Here, despite language similarity, we see a breeding ground for violent confrontation. Once we control for factors such as urban versus rural base of the minority population, language similarity will be shown to have no explanatory power. But presenting the bivariate correlations helps to undermine the oft-expressed opinion that cultural differences in and of themselves are prescriptions for violent confrontations, especially in an age of identity politics.

Language Grievances and Violence

The Gurr dataset has two variables measuring language grievance, each measured for two-year time periods (1990–1991, 1992–1993, 1994– 1995). The first variable measures the level of demands by the minority to have its language given greater official status. The second variable measures the level of demands by the minority to have its language used as a medium of instruction in state schools. I constructed a composite variable, MAXLANG, which is the maximum value of grievance on either of the variables in any of the time periods. The bivariate relationship between MAXLANG and REBELLION is –.055. Not only is the relationship

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

not significant in a positive direction, but the sign is the opposite of what the Gellnerian approach to modernization would have led us to expect.16

Perhaps language grievances alone are not a causal factor explaining group violence but in conjunction with other factors can raise its probability. To find out it is necessary to go beyond bivariate correlations and comparisons of means and examine these relationships through regression analysis. In the multiple regressions that follow, using a cross-sectional study of rebellion that I completed in collaboration with James Fearon,17 I enter three control variables that have the greatest predictive power: namely, the log of gross domestic product (GDP) taken from 1960, the rate of GDP growth from 1960 to 1980, and a dummy variable I call RURBASE that indicates whether the group has had a long-term rural settlement in a specific region of the country.18 With these controls the coefficient of MAXLANG is not always negative when regressed against REBELLION. But, as we will see, as I analyze Table 13.2, language grievances do not add to the straws on the camel’s back, fostering violence.

The intuition behind the camel’s back approach to ethnic violence is that language grievances alone are not a sufficient cause for rebellion but in conjunction with other factors can add to an atmosphere that induces rebellion. The specification listed in Table 13.2 examines this intuition. Besides the control variables, it includes a variable MAXRELGR, which is the maximum score of religious grievances expressed by the minority group in the first half-decade of the 1990s. It also includes a value taken from the polity database on the degree to which the country was democratic in 1989, called here DEMOCRACY. Finally, it includes an interaction term called LGxRG, which is the product of MAXRELGR and MAXLANG.19

TABLE 13.2 Rebellion and Cultural Grievances—Dependent Variable: REBELLION; Linear Regression: OLS

Independent Variable

Coefficient (B)

Standard Error

MAXLANG

.202

.167

MAXRELGR**

.418

.152

LGxRG*

–.200

.101

DEMOCRACY 1989

.062

.050

GDPCHANGE 1960–1980**

–.874

.249

RURBASE**

1.277

.396

LANGSIM

.125

.227

LOGGDP60**

–.682

.221

Constant**

6.249

1.63

R2=.27105.

*Significant at p<.05;

**Significant at p<.01

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

Several important relationships need to be elaborated from the analysis of Table 13.2. First, although the positive relationship of LANGSIM and REBELLION remains as in the bivariate analysis, the relationship is not significant at all once controls are added. Second, the relationship of MAXLANG and REBELLION is no longer a negative one, but that relationship as well is not statistically significant. Third, the relationship between MAXRELGR and REBELLION is significantly positive, suggesting that a one-point jump in MAXRELGR (on a four-point scale) raises the likely rebellion score by nearly half a point. The statistical effects of language grievance on rebellion are thus quite distinct from those of religious grievance on rebellion, a point I return to later. Fourth, the level of democracy has no significant relationship to the scale of REBELLION. I elaborate on this point later as well.

Fifth, and most significant for challenging the straw and camel’s back intuition, is the strong negative relationship between the LGxRG interaction term and REBELLION. What this captures is a slope for MAXLANG that is marginally positive (.21) when there are no religious grievances at all (MAXRELGR=0). Yet the slope of MAXLANG changes sign (to –.4) when there are high levels of religious grievance (MAXRELGR=3).20 One way to see this relationship is to compare the REBELLION mean score of 2.58 when MAXRELGR=3 and MAXLANG=0 to the mean score of 1.05 for REBELLION when MAXRELGR stays at 3 but MAXLANG=3. Adding a powerful language grievance to a powerful religious grievance thereby reduces the REBELLION score by 1.53, a very powerful effect indeed.

Suppose (in a stylized portrait of Sudan) that a Muslim-dominated country where Arabic is the official language dominates over a Christian region whose people speak a variety of languages, but none of them have Arabic as their mother tongue. Further suppose that the majority imposes Shari’a (i.e., Muslim law) on the minority, activating regional entrepreneurs to use the churches as recruiting grounds for a rebellion, overcoming the logic of collective inaction. Finally, suppose that the majority adds fuel to the fire by imposing Arabic as the sole official language for schools throughout the country. (Because the dominant region already was relying on Arabic, there is no problem of implementation.) Now not only the priests but the schoolteachers are mobilized. But this additional mobilized group need not add fuel to the revolutionary fire, as Table 13.2 counterintuitively demonstrated. First, there will be an incentive for some southerners to learn Arabic and get prized jobs, without a school hierarchy policing their linguistic defection. Second, the aggrieved schoolteachers face a difficult choice: whether to fight in the guerrilla camps (with the anti-Shari’a forces) on the religious front or in the state bureaucracies on the linguistic front. To the extent that they can win delays and concessions

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

on the latter front, the oppressive language laws may take some potential rebels out of the rebellion.

Not all cases of high religious and high language grievances are peaceful (Catholics in Northern Ireland, Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka, and Serbs in Croatia are members of this category), but most are quite peaceful (Russians in Uzbekistan, Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka, Germans in Kazakhstan, Malays in Singapore). If a score on REBELLION that is greater than three is taken as an indicator of large-scale ethnic war, under conditions of high language and religious grievances in only three out of 22 cases (14 percent) were there large-scale wars. For the entire sample of 267 cases, 65 (24 percent) were experiencing a high level of rebellion in the 1990s. The conjunction of both language and religious grievances yields a far lower probability of large-scale ethnic war than language alone. To sum up, although MAXLANG in isolation has no significant relationship to REBELLION, as an interaction term with MAXRELGR, language grievances reduce the potential for violence.

Language Grievances and Political Protest

Language grievances alone do not increase the probability of violence (but they appear to have some ameliorative effects), but this does not mean that grievances over language policy lead to political quiescence. In fact, the reverse is true. The MAR database has a separate six-point scale for level of political protest, going from “none reported” to “demonstrations of greater than 100,000 people.” Table 13.3 contains the result of a regression equation that is precisely the same as in Table 13.2, except that here the dependent variable is PROTEST, the maximum degree of protest in the years 1990–1995. Here MAXLANG is powerfully and positively

TABLE 13.3 Protest and Cultural Grievances—Dependent Variable: PROTEST; Linear Regression: OLS

Independent Variable

Coefficient (B)

Standard Error

MAXLANG*

.284

.121

MAXRELGR

.061

.110

LGXRG

–.059

.074

DEMOCRACY 1989

.055

.036

GDPCHANGE 1960–1980

.144

.181

RURBASE**

.924

.288

LANGSIM

–.155

.165

LOGGDP60

.130

.161

Constant

.312

1.19

R2=.177.

*Significant at p<.05;

**Significant at p<.01

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

related to PROTEST, but this is not the case for MAXRELGR nor the interaction term of language and religious grievances (LGxRG). In a point I develop in the following section, language grievances seem to draw angry citizens into the realm of political protest but not into guerrilla armies.

Turning the Question on Its Head: Explaining the Modulating Effects of Linguistic Conflict

How to interpret the data so far? Language issues themselves do not cause group violence. In fact, language conflicts, under conditions where religious grievances are powerful, are associated with lower levels of ethnic violence than under conditions where religious grievances are weak. We might therefore turn the usual question on its head: Why does language conflict moderate ethnic violence?

HOW CAN A STRAW STRENGTHEN THE CAMEL’S BACK?

It is a stretch (not justified by the data) to claim that language grievances reduce violence; but since the bivariate relationship with REBELLION is negative (and in interaction with religious grievances it is significantly negative when regressed on REBELLION), it is useful to ask theoretically why the effect of language grievances on ethnic rebellion is not strongly positive and what ameliorative influence language grievance might have on ethnic relations. In this section I present a stylized model of an “official language” game. Traveling down its strategic steps will suggest three ameliorative mechanisms that reduce the probability of official language policy turning into violent intergroup conflict. The first centers on the potential subversion of the oppressive language laws by educated members of the dominant group, which makes it more difficult for a state to implement a new official language. The second centers on the general bureaucratic problem, even if there is substantial support from government and business elites in the dominant group, of changing language norms. These problems ironically enable the government to make credible commitments in bargaining with the discriminated-against minority language groups. The third centers on the problem of collective action that is faced when language entrepreneurs of the minority language groups seek to recruit warriors to fight on their behalf.

Consider the stylized “official language game” represented in Figure 13.1. Suppose a popular postcolonial government is being pressed by its ethnic constituency to pass language laws in favor of the dominant national group. It can either accept the status quo (say, continued use of the

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

FIGURE 13.1 Official language game.

neutral colonial language) or make the majority group’s language the official language of the state. If the government does the latter, the leading bureaucratic and business elites among the majority must decide individually whether to subvert the law they had demanded or accept it and begin operating in the new state language for their official duties. If they accept the law, the burden is put on the minority population, which can learn the newly official language (i.e., assimilate) or defy the government, by either migrating out of the country or organizing politically for linguistic autonomy in the state.

The values for each outcome reckoned in Figure 13.1 are as follows. The government would most prefer full acceptance and assimilation by the minority (as this would be a rationalized state); it would least prefer the status quo, as this would be a signal that it is unresponsive to its own

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

constituency. It is indifferent among the three other possible outcomes. The majority group would most prefer either assimilation (like its government) or minority exit (which would provide purity for the majority at a cost of a lower tax base for the government). It would least prefer minority autonomy, as this would assure protected jobs for the minority population. The majority would be indifferent between the status quo (where they can blame their government) and majority defiance of the government’s language law (where they can blame each other). The minority would prefer the status quo or defiance by the majority, as either would assure it continued use of the colonial language in schools and in state administration. It would least prefer assimilation (as this would be costly and take generations) and exit (because this would uproot people from their homes). Autonomy for the minority would be better than assimilation but worse than the status quo.

Given this game structure and stipulated values for each player, through backward induction we can see that it would be rational for the government to make the majority language official. But the majority population, should it accept, would see the minority population defy and then seek autonomy. This path would yield the majority its worst outcome. If the majority defied, it could assure itself a medium return, and this dominates the expected return of acceptance. The unique equilibrium here is the officialization of the majority language while the majority population subverts and continues to rely on the colonial language.

This dynamic might be thought of as a game of “chicken,” with Indian language policy being the prime example. The Indian constitution committed the federal government to the promotion of Hindi as the official language of interstate communication and state communication with the union government. To the extent that the federal government pressed for rapid achievement of this outcome, Indian politicians from non-Hindi-speaking states pretended total ignorance of Hindi and demanded greater regional autonomy. To the extent that the future was put off indefinitely, non-Hindi speakers accommodated themselves to the constitutional arrangement and tempered their autonomist desires. I described the outcome in these terms: “The Union authorities promote Hindi but deny that they will impose it; the people from non-Hindi zones learn Hindi but deny they can use it.” To a considerable extent, that analysis is consistent with the official language equilibrium proposed here—with a Union commitment to Hindi coinciding with the continued use of English in virtually all official domains.21

This equilibrium may help explain the weak negative coefficient for language grievance regressed on rebellion. If rebellion occurs only when the minority seeks autonomy from the state, it will occur (only rarely) when the game has gone off the equilibrium path. Most cases of grievance

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

occur on the equilibrium path after officialization of the majority language, while the majority is in the course of undermining its provisions. Only in cases of majority acceptance—when the majority is uncertain how the minority will respond—would language grievance have incendiary implications. Thus, this interpretation of the weakly negative coefficient: it is not that language grievances cause peace; it is that language grievances on the equilibrium path are less likely to be so threatening to any party as to make violence a rational response.

Besides the incentive for the backward-inducing majority to defect, two other mechanisms embedded in this game merit consideration. Consider first the burden on the elites in the majority (especially those in the civil service) in accepting the new language laws they claim publicly to have supported. Civil servants in general oppose the rationalization of heretofore unofficial, and partly in consequence low-status, languages because entrenched bureaucrats initially received their positions by taking examinations in the soon-to-be proscribed language. They will do all they can to make the switchover appear as technically difficult as possible, to delay the time when their special linguistic competence will have little value for promotion.

Therefore, one theoretical reason why language conflicts are associated with lower levels of violent conflict is that it is possible for the government in a language conflict to commit to a compromise without the minority fearing that the commitment hides a secret plan to overturn the status quo when conditions are more propitious for full-scale language rationalization.22 The ability to credibly commit is largely due to the fact that a language shift takes generations, and it is impossible for a state to impose a new language of education, administration, or certification without a long lead time.23 In Figure 13.1’s game this means that the move to “accept” by the majority group is not a simple choice but a coordination dynamic among fellow majority-language speakers that might take a generation to complete. Thus, the breaking of a commitment by an emboldened rationalizing state would require myriad new regulations and teaching programs, consuming years of effort, thereby giving the affected linguistic regions a chance to mobilize in opposition. Language compromises—amenable to commitments—are therefore less incendiary than other types of center/ periphery agreements (e.g., the commitment of a weak state that it would never disband a regional parliament).

A second theoretical reason why language conflicts are associated with lower levels of violent conflict has to do with collective-action problems faced by minority groups. Once a language-rationalization program is legislated in the modern era, minority-language entrepreneurs in the periphery of the state invariably get activated, and they usually join in alliance with their own poets, philologists, lexicographers, and interna-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

tional activists (often with financial support from UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) in order to save “their” languages from extinction due to the projected effects of a rationalization program. Language is so intimately connected to group identity that these entrepreneurs have little trouble articulating a powerful collective grievance if their language is threatened. But these very language entrepreneurs have a problem: although collective refusal to assimilate would be in everyone’s interest, it would be individually rational for any particular member of the minority to assimilate.24

Because of the relative ease of linguistic “defection”—that is, the choice by some subset of the minority population to assimilate—it is much more difficult for language entrepreneurs (even if funded by emigrés and international organizations) to organize collectively against linguistic discrimination than it is for religious entrepreneurs to organize collectively against religious discrimination. To be sure, students and the educated unemployed who are not literate in the newly upgraded language will be gravely affected by language regulations in an immediate way, without the long lead time that would protect entrenched bureaucrats. Absent the chance for middle-class jobs, these youths are easily mobilized into militant opposition groups. The founding leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as we shall see, is an example of such a reaction. But these youths, employment threatened through discrimination, may find many of their compatriots (or their younger siblings) developing competence in the state language and thereby decreasing the solidarity of a minority linguistic group in opposition to the state.

We now have a basis to distinguish the different coefficients for language and religious grievance. Compared to religion, language groups never have organizational hierarchies with powers to police members. In fact, language discrimination (because of the social reality of multilingualism) easily permits those who are discriminated against to invest in their children’s expanded language repertoires, so that intergenerationally the linguistic discrimination they face will become attenuated. Religious organizations are much more attentive to bireligiosity and strongly sanction allegiance to more than one faith. Conversion often entails high costs in social status from within one’s former religious group. As seen in Table 13.2, compared to religious grievance, under conditions of high ethnic potential for violence, language grievances are more conducive to peace than rebellion. This is not to say that religious grievances cannot be negotiated. After all, the European states after the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 developed a formula for doing so. And evidence from southwestern Nigeria shows that religious differences can be depoliticized by state authority.25 But my point here is that the organization of language groups in

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

confrontation with state authority has greater organizational and strategic constraints than the organization of religious groups.

In sum, the official-language game, once specified, makes the relationship between oppressive language laws and violence weakly negative. The language game encompasses features that show how the commitment problem, and the difficulty faced by language entrepreneurs in punishing defectors, work to reduce the incentives for intergroup violence over language issues. Along with backward induction giving majority speakers incentives to defy language laws passed in their name, these additional strategic factors provide plausible reasons why language grievances do not add fuel to the ethnic fire.

COMPARATIVE SPECULATIONS

The statistical and theoretical expositions on the ameliorative effects of language oppression (compared to the expectations that one would find a strong positive coefficient) remain difficult to accept. But a perusal of well-known cases in the Organization for European Cooperation and Development (OECD) states on language conflict and its supposed disruptive influences on the integrity of the state—in Quebec, Norway, the Jura, Catalonia, and Belgium—gives an ex post obviousness to my claims. What is noteworthy about these cases is that none were linked in any way to significant guerrilla activity. Although many political analysts have treated these conflicts with exaggerated fears of what may come to pass if the program of the linguistic nationalists (as in Quebec) is fulfilled, combined with mockery at the passions that apparently tiny slights can raise (as in Belgium, with the fall of governments hanging on such slights), few have recognized that language conflicts in the West have been far more peaceful than the industrial conflicts of an earlier era. In comparison, the cases in the Western democratic states that have captured the greatest attention in regard to ethnically based violence are those of Northern Ireland and the Basque Country in Spain. In both of these cases, language issues (vis-à-vis the state) were not central to the violence.

In this section my argument is best developed not by examining the peaceful versus the violent conflicts in OECD states (as in the MAR database, all those conflicts are on a world standard quite peaceful) but rather by looking closely at two well-known cases (one where violence was predicted, the other where it occurred) to identify in the real world some of the mechanisms that were theoretically elaborated on earlier. By looking at some individual cases we can also capture elements of the theorized processes that are missed in cross-sectional analyses.

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

Language Policy in India and the Movement for State Status in Andhra Pradesh

Upon independence, as indicated by Harrison’s ominous prediction of violent confrontation (cited in the Introduction), India suffered from language heterogeneity. Yet slowly but inexorably, a peaceful equilibrium developed, in part a result of the chicken game described earlier. I have called this equilibrium a 3±1 language outcome. The colonial language maintains its status in the bureaucracy, in international business, and in higher education. Meanwhile, an indigenous lingua franca plays a supportive role as the national language, more important in popular culture (television, music, and movies) than in the corridors of political power. At the same time, regional leaders are able to consolidate local power by developing realms for state languages and a state-level civil service operating in each. Local services would thereby require literacy in the state language. Finally, minorities and migrants in any region have won protection from the center so that they can receive education and services in their own language. For many Indians seeking a wide range of mobility opportunities, therefore, trilingualism is normal: English, Hindi, and the state language. For Indians living in states where Hindi or English is the state language, only bilingualism (3–1) is required. For minorities in non-Hindi and non-English states, who themselves are not Hindi speakers, a fourth language (3+1) is required.

If this formula were to be fully institutionalized, all Indians would be able to communicate with one another, and individual multilingualism would allow for constantly changed language use depending on circumstance and interlocutor. In this section I first look at language grievances articulated by the Telugu speakers (who initially did not have a state of their own) in reaction to the emergence of government-supported state languages throughout the Indian federation. I then look more generally at the relatively peaceful consolidation of the 3±1 equilibrium in India as a whole.

Nationalist leaders in the Telugu-speaking areas of Madras, Hyderabad, and Mysore states at the time of Indian independence hoped to gain recognition for their homeland as a linguistically based state. For 30 years the Congress Party had been committed to the reorganization of India’s states on the basis of language. But in the postindependence period two commissions reneged on this promise, contending that national integration, efficiency of administration, and protection of minorities all argued for the preservation of linguistically mixed states. The second commission (the so-called JVP Committee) left the door open a crack for a future Telugu-speaking state and helped induce a Gandhi-style move-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

ment of protest, culminating in 1952 in the death through fasting of Potti Sriramula. The Congress Party government was shocked, and a new state was granted in 1953.

The movement for Telugu autonomy, organized in the 1930s, was induced in part by the rabid nationalism and strong cultural revival of the Tamil speakers in the Madras presidency. This movement struck a positive chord among early nationalist leaders in Telengana, an economically backward region of Telugu speakers in Hyderabad State, and in their alliance with the Madras Telugus, a notion of “Vishalandhra” (Greater Andhra), recalling the greatness of the ancient Nizam kingdom, became a mobilizing idea. Linguistic unity prevailed and Andhra Pradesh became a state, though working out an official list of translations for standard Telugu was a bureaucratic nightmare.26

One of the greatest obstacles to the peaceful emergence of an Andhra state was intralinguistic (though Telengana Telugu is more heavily Urduized than the Telugu in Andhra) because of a popular sense in Telengana that Telenganas would lose out in job competition with the more highly educated Telugu speakers from Madras. Telengana leaders therefore got a “sons of the soil” agreement from Delhi protecting their right to government jobs in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh. Nonetheless, communal riots in 1969 and 1972 undermined the peace. Although dialect issues brought some tensions, and the much higher percentage of Muslims in Telengana raised the specter of religious conflict, the issues that sparked these agitations had to do with economic development funds, the use of revenue surpluses generated by Telengana local government, the purchasing of Telengana domicile certificates by Andhras (allowing them to get reserved jobs), and the composition of the state cabinet. Andhra leaders spread propaganda that all state jobs (as the capital, Hyderabad, was in Telengana) would go to Telenganas. The proximate cause of the 1969 agitation was the decision by the Andhra Pradesh High Court that the job reservation system did not apply to the state electricity board. But in 1972 when the Indian Supreme Court supported the Telenganas, the issue turned violent. From November through January (1973) there were six separate incidents, with separatists claiming more than 250 deaths caused by police shootings.27 These incidents were far more disruptive than the one death associated with the movement to create a linguistic state in the first place. Intralinguistic agitation over job reservations was more violent than was interlinguistic agitation.28

The concession of statehood to Andhra induced yet a third language commission in India, the States Reorganization Commission, which now had to develop a revised long-term policy in regard to language and state boundaries. It faced demands and pressures from all over the country,

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

but there was no violence. Once its recommendations were published, however, riots broke out in Bombay (as Marathis and Gujaratis each wanted their own state, with Bombay as the capital) in which 80 people were killed. In 1961 the States Reorganization Commission granted separate statehood to Nagaland, where Naga speakers would no longer be in the grip of Assamese-speaking leadership. This concession helped end a nasty war in the northeastern provinces of India. It also helped establish a linguistic criterion for statehood that, when minorities were given protection by the central government, consolidated the 3±1 equilibrium, an equilibrium that has been uncontested for more than 30 years.

Two leading students of Indian politics have remarked on the pluralist, democracy-enhancing, and violence-mitigating language policies that developed in the wake of the Andhra agitation. In Paul Brass’s distinguished work on language and religion in north India, a basic set of rules concerning ethnic politics is outlined. Most important, Brass points out, as a result of the murderous secession of Pakistan, the Indian government does not entertain demands based on religious membership or demands for any form of secession. The government does not make concessions to any ethnic group, Brass further finds, if the result is unacceptable to a rival group. Finally, no concessions are made to an ethnic group unless it proves itself by being able to mobilize the masses in favor of its leaders’ goals. What follows from this set of principles is that linguistic entrepreneurs who can successfully mobilize constituents, and who do so without raising the specter of secession from India or war with neighboring groups, get recognition and with that recognition comes a package of group rights and protected jobs.29 The legitimacy of language claims made on behalf of groups has brought language demands into the realm of normal (nonviolent) political conflict.

Jyotirindra Das Gupta has also emphasized the pluralist and associational logic of the implicit rule legitimating language demands by disaffected groups. Although the bulk of his book considers the political implications of the constitutional stipulation that Hindi replace English as the all-India language (projected to occur in 1965), the final chapter addresses some broader questions concerning language, democracy, and violent conflict. With the reduced political power of the Hindi proponents in Congress after the 1962 elections, Das Gupta writes, Congress proposed an Official Languages Act in 1963 that would remove the requirement that English give way to Hindi for all administrative affairs by 1965. Though anti-Hindi forces from the south were dissatisfied (because of a loophole), the Hindi supporters in the administrative services began implementing the switchover to Hindi with all too much gusto. In Madras, where graduates were more successful than in any other state in gaining entrance to the prestigious Indian Administrative Service because of the

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

excellent English instruction in state schools, students reacted with protests, which were repressed by the government. Two nationalist party leaders in Madras publicly burned themselves to death in protest against government repression. Agitation, claiming the lives of 66 people, continued for two months, until the government gave in to all student demands. Das Gupta judges that the deaths were caused not by language activism but rather by the police in repressing normal political protest.

Das Gupta recounts the language battles of the 1960s, including the Report of the Education Commission of 1966, which gave a much greater role to the state languages in higher education (leading in 1967 to a situation in which 35 universities allowed the regional language to be used in examinations, and in 15 universities, a majority of students opted for their regional language as the medium of lectures), and including as well the Official Language (Amendment) Bill of 1967, which legally entrenched English to stand with Hindi as the link languages between the union and the states. The give and take of normal democratic politics comes out quite clearly.

“Given the nature of the Indian language situation,” Das Gupta concludes, “it is hard to imagine a more acceptable solution than this compromise,” which in its specifics is summed up by the 3±1 formula. But for Das Gupta, not only was the outcome relatively peaceful and satisfying to all parties but the politics itself “offered a way to diversify the structure of the political movements through autonomous, modernized, interest associations.” Forced to form coalitions to succeed politically, language associations, according to Das Gupta, have contributed to “the initiation of large numbers of people in organizational modes of participation,” and language politics itself “has proved to be one of the most important positive democratic channels for pursuing political integration as well as political development.”30

In terms of my theoretical argument, language politics in India have been subject to pluralistic bargaining (with no zero-sum nonnegotiable issues). Indeed, language issues quickly moved from the streets to the arenas of bureaucratic regulation, defusing their symbolic power. Unlike issues that escalate into warfare because both sides are unable to commit to their agreements, the Indian government (after some halting efforts) was able to commit to a continued reliance on English as long as the southern states wanted to communicate with the center in the colonial language; they did so by building into law civil service examination procedures that were self-enforcing in that senior civil servants (many from Madras) had an interest in their continuation.

Through all the protest, while the central government was giving assurances that Hindi would not replace English, more and more southerners, working in the north (and watching northern television sagas and movies),

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

became well acquainted with Hindi. Because of increased knowledge of Hindi by southerners, it will surely be more difficult for anti-Hindi forces to mobilize a united front against future small moves to increase the realms of Hindi use. For all of these reasons, language politics in India were not the cause of the dangerous decades that Selig Harrison feared. Nor were they anticivil, as are all primordial ties, as Geertz foresaw. Rather, language in India has been an arena of conflict that is fought politically rather than militarily. And as the Telugu discussion emphasizes, the battles to overcome language grievances can be far less incendiary than those resulting from job reservation grievances (with language not a factor at all). The route to the 3±1 equilibrium in India was in no way guaranteed to avoid violence; but as I have argued, there are many attributes of language politics leading up to 3±1 or related equilibria that politicize rather than militarize ethnic conflict.31

Language-Based Violent Confrontations in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, of course, the judgments of scholars lead to the opposite conclusion, namely, that language conflict can play into economic, religious, and territorial conflicts to exacerbate tensions, making violence more likely. Language-based conflict in Sri Lanka is certainly associated with the highest scales of ethnic violence. Indeed, all of the ingredients for such violence were in the stew by the mid-1950s. In my recodings of the MAR database, the Sri Lankan Tamils receive a RURBASE=1, suggesting high potential for violence. The Tamils are ethnically distinct from the Sinhalese (but nothing close to the “racial” division often portrayed in the press)32 and conceive of a distinct region of the island (the northeast) as part of a Tamil homeland. With this demographic situation, postcolonial Sri Lankan ethnic violence has the ethnic dimension suggested by the rationalization logic, with an apparent language motivation.

The violence in Sri Lanka has been egregious. In the MAR six-level scale (from acts of harassment to communal warfare), communal conflict involving the Sri Lanka Tamils was at level 5 (communal rioting) in the 1950s, went down to 4 (antigroup demonstrations) in the 1960s, went up to 5 in the 1970s, and achieved a 6 with the riots of the 1980s. In the 1990s the level was recorded at 5. As for rebellion, on a seven-point scale, going from the very lowest scores in the 1950s to 1970s, the score went to 7 in the 1980s, making the Tamil rebellion among the bloodiest of all ethnic wars in the post-World War II era.

The MAR violence scores cannot be accounted for by any notion of ancient hatreds. Sinhalese and Tamils had been living in peace with one another for centuries. To be sure, there were religious riots in 1883 (Buddhists versus Catholics) and much more violent ones in 1915 (Buddhists

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

versus recent Muslim migrants from southern India). These riots, however, had almost nothing to do with the so-called ethnic division between Sinhalese and Tamils. Therefore, a contemporary explanation for ethnic violence is in order, and language appears to have played a central role in fostering the tragic postcolonial conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese.

In fact, the very first violent riot of the postcolonial period in 1956 followed directly from an intense battle over language policy. As a result, Sri Lanka has become a paradigmatic case for illustrating the relationship of language rationalization and ethnic war. The explanation follows the logic of late state consolidation. Under British colonial rule, English was the language of social mobility, and Sri Lankan Tamils (many taking advantage of missionary education), despite colonial restrictions putting geographic and demographic constraints on Tamils and keeping them from achieving as many coveted positions as they might have gotten by merit alone, achieved excellent government positions and settled into good middle-class lives in Colombo.

But with independence in 1948 there was increasing pressure by the majority Sinhalese voters to limit the Tamil presence in high political and bureaucratic circles. Here is where political Buddhism comes into the picture. Leading Buddhist monks began to portray the Sinhalese as a “beleaguered majority” at the hands of the Tamils. Part of their story was the ideology of a new Buddhism in which “to be Buddhist is to be Aryan Sinhalese by ‘race’ and ‘language,’ and to be Sinhalese by race gives the right to exclude, perhaps even exterminate, other ‘races’ in Sri Lanka, especially the Dravidians.” Buddhism in Sri Lanka since the 1950s, in Tambiah’s judgment, has therefore centered on cults that emphasize the Sinhalese people’s distinction from the Tamil population. Political Buddhists deny the historical fact that many of the cults were of Hindu origin incorporated into Buddhism and in the nineteenth century were jointly worshiped by Tamils and Sinhalese.33

In the context of religious fanaticism and political independence, a new coalition formed. On one side were the politicized Buddhists. On the other side were the rural elites, teachers, indigenous doctors, traders, merchants, all educated in Sinhalese and opposed to the English-speaking elites in the capital. They were exclusivist in their nationalism, combining Buddhism, Sinhalese “people,” and myths of their “Aryan race.” These politicized Buddhists and rural nationalist followers joined to overturn the first government of the United Nationalist Party (UNP) and brought to power S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike, the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). Shortly thereafter, in 1956, the Sinhala-Only Act was passed with a promise that the society would be Sinhalized within 24 hours. In terms of Figure 13.1 this was the first move in the official-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

language game, which made the majority language the sole official language of the state, supplanting English, the colonial language.

As the Parliament was voting on this Sinhala-Only Act, the Tamil-led Federal Party leaders (who got little support in 1952 but had much greater success in 1956 as its leaders in response to UNP promises spoke out for parity status of the Tamil language) successfully organized a work stoppage in Tamil-majority areas and a Gandhi-inspired sit-in in front of the House of Representatives in Colombo. A confrontation emerged between the protesters and the police; it eventually included bands of Sinhalese youths, who engaged in vandalism throughout Colombo. Only injuries resulted from these confrontations, but the sit-ins and the subsequent melee induced a second wave of violence in which there were more than 100 deaths in the Eastern Province where Tamils and Sinhalese lived intermingled.

Another round of riots in 1958 followed, despite a pact between Prime Minister Bandaranaike and S.J.V.Chelvanayagam, the leader of the Federal Party, that provided for official use of Tamil and creation of regional councils in Tamil-populated areas. UNP politicians opportunistically saw this as an opening for their return to power. They joined forces with the monks to decry the peace pact as a “betrayal of the Sinhalese” and staged provocative pilgrimages to mobilize support. With tensions already high and provoked by news that Tamils in the north had defaced National Transport buses painted with Sinhalese lettering, Sinhalese gangs in the south joined the fray and vandalized Tamil signs on retail establishments. Politicized monks pressed Bandaranaike to renounce the pact. A series of violent confrontations ensued. They continued for two weeks in a chain reaction, first to riots on the eastern coast linked to anger over population resettlement schemes, then to Sinhalese vandalism of Tamil property in the south, and finally to Tamil attacks on Sinhalese-minority communities in the north and east. Martial law was finally imposed.34

Relations between the Tamil and Sinhalese after 1958 teetered on the brink of civil war. A solution appeared to be in sight, however, when President Jayewardene won the election in 1977 with great support from the Indian Tamils. He recognized their Ceylon Workers’ Congress, the union of plantation workers and had Tamil awarded the status of national language (though not the official language). He also negotiated with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) for district councils in the regions. And he negotiated to lessen the impact of the educational “affirmative action” programs that favored Sinhalese youth. Yet in 1981 and (much worse) in 1983, large-scale violence erupted between Tamils and Sinhalese.

The 1983 violence had some important features that Tambiah empha-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

sizes. It was the product of “organized mob” work: the rioters had detailed knowledge of Tamil homes through access to voter lists, and this made their destruction quite specific. Systematic vandalism was aimed at Tamil businesses and factories. Not only Sri Lankan Tamil interests were targeted but “all Indian enterprises.” The motivating idea was “that every Indian is a Tamil and that every Tamil is a terrorist.” The police and army either actively participated or passively encouraged the rioting. Worse, the president allowed the rioting to go on too long before declaring a state of emergency. He asserted then that “the time has come to accede to the clamor and the national respect of the Sinhalese people.” He therefore banned the TULF. Neither he nor his minister of security had a word of sympathy for the condition of the Tamils. It is clear that they were playing to the hard-line racists in the government and army. In Tambiah’s assessment, “those who stood to gain [the] most were, firstly, middle-level Sinhala entrepreneurs, businessmen, and white-collar workers, and secondly, the urban poor, mainly through looting.” The result of this pogrom was that 350 to 2,000 were killed and about 100,000 were made refugees.35

Tambiah’s accounts of the bases of this violence are fair minded and judicious. He elegantly weaves the language issue with the religious problems of the newly politicized Buddhists, the demographic challenges in the Eastern Province, and the economic problems of job scarcity in a postcolonial economy. One of his important insights emerged when he asked why the riots, presumably caused by a language law, spread with such ferocity to the rural areas, where social mobility and government jobs were hardly the burning issues facing the peasants. The answer that Tambiah provides is that in this area the government was resettling Sinhalese in such numbers as to make the Eastern Province into a Sinhalese-majority area, with vast consequences for any future federal design.36 Fear of becoming a minority in their home region, rather than loss of civil service opportunities, was surely a more important motivating force for peasants. In no sense does Tambiah even suggest that the language issue was a principal cause of the riots; rather, from his point of view it contributed to the layers of mistrust and threat that divided Sinhala and Tamil in the postcolonial era.

Yet a few facts make one wonder if Tambiah’s accounts hold together. Why, if it were the Tamils who were most threatened by the language policy, was most of the rioting in Colombo in both 1956 and 1958 initiated by the Sinhalese, with virtually no Tamil violence aimed at Sinhalese until 1975?37 Or, why did the most horrifyingly fatal riots (those in 1981 and 1983) and the formation of a full-scale rebellion occur after Tamil was accorded nearly equal status in Sir Lankan law? Or, finally, why did the language issue disappear from public debate in inverse proportion to the level of escalation of violence on the island? The theory I presented ear-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

lier, along with the comparative data on language conflict, suggests a different story from the one Tambiah and most of the objective observers of the Sri Lankan conflict tell. My alternative story line is that the language conflict was one of the factors that worked to ameliorate violence, but other factors outweighed the language issue to drive Sri Lanka into large-scale ethnic war. Let us now return to the language issue, with an eye toward its bureaucratization.

Bureaucratization of Language Policy in Sri Lanka

In 1833 a British commission recommended that English become the language of public proceedings in Ceylon, though it took a half century before a Sri Lankan actually qualified for high-level service. A new governing elite of English-speaking Sri Lankans was thereby created, only to be challenged by populist politicians campaigning in the 1940s under conditions of universal suffrage. In 1943–1944 the State Council adopted a motion introduced by J.R.Jayewardene to replace English by Sinhalese and Tamil (overcoming the original motion, which mentioned only Sinhalese).

It was only after three years of independence that the governor general put the whole language issue under the auspices of the ministry of finance and appointed an implementing commission for this motion. Five interim reports from 1951 through 1953 were issued before the final report came in October 1953, which essentially subverted the bill by claiming that the introduction of ill-developed languages such as Sinhalese and Tamil into official life was unrealistic. One hundred nine recommendations followed for a future introduction of the national languages into official life. Some of the commission’s recommendations, such as the issuance of official terms (developed by “Official Terms Committees of Sinhala and Tamil,” which by 1955 had indexed 43,000 Sinhala and 48,117 Tamil terms and phrases used in the public sector),38 training in stenography and typing (as reading shorthand in Sinhalese turned out to be quite difficult and for which was published A Guide to the Reading of Handwritten Documents in 1955), and the organization of language schools for civil servants not competent to write either Sinhalese or Tamil, were already being addressed. To coordinate all of the implementing activities, the Official Languages Bureau was made a special unit of the ministry of finance. Annual reports of the bureau pointed to wide areas of progress, but in its begging for more funds, more personnel, more official terms in Sinhalese and Tamil, and more laws written in those languages, success seemed eons away.

In 1956 the government changed course and passed the Sinhala-Only Act. It was a brief act, just giving a few principles, with no official regula-

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

tions. However threatening this act was to the Tamil community, it was not self-enforcing. A variety of subsequent government memoranda set out general guidelines. First, to keep the civil service operating, the cabinet determined that “old entrants” (those who were currently in the civil service) had joined the civil service “on the assumption that the language through which their duties have to be carried out will be English.” Determining that “it does not appear to be fair…that an officer recruited in this way should be forced to adopt Sinhalese,” the cabinet determined that English-speaking old entrants not only would not be fired but would never be forced to use Sinhalese to carry out their official duties, could not be subject to fines, and would be given cash bonuses for learning Sinhalese. Even “new entrants” would be able to take civil service examinations in English, but they would be required to learn Sinhalese in a three-year grace period. Gunasekera concludes from his analysis of the legal situation that “in effect, although the election pledge of [the] government was to make Sinhala the official language within 24 hours, the policies that were enunciated were quite inconsistent with that pledge.”39 What Gunasekera does not mention, however, is that the entire upper-level bureaucracy (including Sinhalese), in utter disregard for the spirit of the law, throughout this period relied almost solely on English.40

Partly in reaction to Tamil outrage and the subsequent riots, the government passed the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act No. 28 of 1958 (with no implementing legislation until 1966, when the UNP replaced the SLFP in the government), providing for the use of Tamil as a medium of instruction in schools and as a medium of examination for public service jobs. But better than Tamil resistance to the Sinhala language was popular indifference and bureaucratic inertia. Training classes in the official language were abandoned because of low attendance and lack of interest by both Sinhalese and Tamils. Meanwhile, the commissioner for official languages issued circular after circular demanding that government contractors develop a plan to switch over from English, that retirement schemes be worked out for non-Sinhala speakers still in the service, and that proficiency tests in Sinhala be standardized. The department operated in an environment that was almost unconnected to society. In one report the commissioner wistfully asked “whether the hoped-for objectives could be realized.”41 Subsequent circulars sought to round the square of a Sinhala-Only orientation tempered by the promotion of Tamil as a national language. An official “clarification” of the rules in 1969 provided (to simplify a gaggle of regulations whose relevant sections are reproduced in full by Gunasekera)42 that Sinhala was a necessary language for all official matters but that in the Northern and Eastern provinces, where Tamil could be used for official purposes, a Tamil version must be attached. This new orientation led to utter stasis, and in 1970 the

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

SLFP (in coalition with two Marxist parties) regained state power with an ideology of returning to the principles of the 1956 Sinhala-Only Act.

The politics of language continued to zig-zag in the way of all pluralist conflicts. The 1972 constitution gave the 1969 clarifications the status of basic law. Yet in 1973 the Official Language Department was taken out of the hands of the ministry of finance and parceled out to a variety of ministries. The department itself fell into desuetude, and its offices were cleared out. In 1977 in a Sinhalese attempt to put flesh on the Sinhala-Only skeleton, a de facto quota system for Tamils was legislated; only 30 percent of university admissions would be based on merit, the rest on population categories. The 1978 constitution essentially gave parity to Sinhala, Tamil, and English (which had previously been the language of elite communication and most bureaucratic activity but without official recognition). Thus, the status of Sinhala was lowered (it was to be the official language but not the “one official language”) and correspondingly the status of Tamil was raised (it became “an official language”). Both were given equal status as national languages, and all citizens had the right to a basic education in either. Each language was envisioned to be prominent in its own regions, but now with English as the link language between them, and a language that could be designated for higher education and courts of law.43 Legal change easily outpaced sociolinguistic reality, and in 1978 an Official Language section was reconstituted, with the hope that coherence could be restored. In 1991 a new Official Language Commission was appointed, with wide theoretical powers. It again sought to develop policies and incentives that would make the official languages the principal means of official communication in their respective regions, but its impact on sociolinguistic reality can only be regarded as minimal. In Sri Lanka the ethnically charged politics of language had become the bureaucratically entrenched subversion of state language policy.

Toward a Reinterpretation Consistent with the Macrodata

There can be no doubt that the language issue provided a powerful symbolic rallying cry in 1956. The Sinhala-Only Act was more of a public humiliation than workable statute. The riots in Colombo were clearly the secondary consequence of the tensions that bedeviled the island in the weeks of debate leading up to the historic vote. The language act of 1956, and the subsequent riots, helped strengthen the Federal Party and made it exclusively Tamil. And the sources of the separatist movement, marked by the rise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the mid-1970s, can be traced to a set of humiliations, one of which was the Sinhala-Only Act.44

The bureaucratic tale told above suggests that taken alone the language issue unleashed a powerful nonsymbolic dynamic. The need to

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

make rules for the use of Sinhalese, and to make provisions for both non-Sinhalese and Sinhalese to use it in official domains, created a vast administrative task. The Department of Official Languages was beset with pressures from a variety of interests, and it required the work of many Tamils to write translations of official terms. Meanwhile, setting standards for Sinhala writing competence too high could backfire, as it could have jeopardized the tenure of many Sinhalese. Language politics, if implementation were to occur, moved into the realm of pluralistic give and take rather than symbolic pronouncement.

Furthermore, because of its inability to implement the Sinhala-Only Act in 24 hours, the government found itself able to commit to Tamils in the bureaucracy that they would not be out in the streets jobless by decree. The regulations for the fulfillment of Sinhala-Only gave assurances to Tamils in the civil service that their jobs and promotions were secure. This helped defuse the anxieties and anger of the Tamil elite. It might also help explain why there was never an alliance of northern autonomists in Jaffna with Tamil professionals in Colombo. The latter group preferred cosmopolitan life in Colombo or emigration to the West over migration to the Northern Province to give intellectual leadership to Tamil Eelam. In 1988, with the Indian government’s intervention, a North Eastern Provincial Government was constituted, and during its honeymoon period it was able to recruit leading Tamil civil servants. But there is no indication in my sources that Tamil officials from the south were moving to Jaffna.45

It is not possible in this context to prove a counterfactual, but it seems at least plausible to argue that with the politicized Sinhala Buddhists in alliance with the rural Sinhalese elites there would easily have been induced pogroms against both Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils as both religious and economic threats. The populating of the Eastern Province with Sinhalese peasants going back to the colonial period continued to threaten the Tamils’ hope for a majority in both the north and east of the island. Reduction in homeland space has been conducive to a national separatist movement, with or without a language issue. Meanwhile, in the arena of language politics, there was a considerable amount of political interaction between Sinhalese and Tamils, with common interests in the development of a reasonable language policy that served both communities’ interests.

If the Tamils were willing to negotiate peacefully over language, we should ask, what explains the systematic refusal by Sinhalese to abjure violence in the 1970s and negotiate a fair language policy? This refusal to negotiate, in Tambiah’s judgment, was a principal source of the violence.46 The standard answer to this question is that the Sinhalese were themselves divided into two parties, representing different dynastic families. Each sought dominance by promising the same electoral base the job

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

opportunities that would become theirs should the Tamils be excluded from the white-collar job market. Either party in power that sought reconciliation was challenged by the other party, waiting in the wings. To establish their anti-Tamil bona fides, leaders of both parties underwrote young thugs to victimize innocent Tamils.

Here we can say that the Sinhalese language policy of 1956 was an instrument of oppression. It is also the case that the job and university quotas based on language increased the number of disaffected youth who had no better alternatives than to join the guerrilla forces. But the economic downturn in the postcolonial period was a cause of the language laws in the first place and was sufficient to marginalize young men (both Sinhalese and Tamils) in the modern economy. More important, however, is that the language policy in itself drew many Tamils into the political arena, a point not recognized by all too many analysts looking for the mechanisms by which language policy pushed Sri Lanka into ethnic war.

Although I concede that the language issue sparked some of the early rioting by Tamils (and the defacing of some Sinhalese signs), a comparativist’s perspective leads me to hold that over the past 40 years its impact has been more ameliorative than exacerbating. The critical piece of evidence, overlooked by several area experts, is that violence was not initiated by those who were aggrieved by an unfair language policy but rather by the group in whose interests the law was passed. The grievances themselves cannot therefore be held to motivate Sri Lankan interethnic violence. A closer look shows that many aggrieved Tamils were drawn by the language policy to bureaucratic insurgency and political protest, peacefully. Here is an example where even the best and most informed case studies may be wrong on the very sign of an important independent variable.

POLICY ANALYSIS

The thesis of this paper, even with the historical reinterpretations of India and Sri Lanka, is so counterintuitive as to leave any reader with a sense of deep skepticism. Many readers will have cases in mind where language decrees fomented popular demonstrations, which brought in the police and spilled over into violence. The Russification decrees in Poland in the 1870s, the promotion of Afrikaans in South Africa’s township schools in 1976, and the law on language in Moldova in 1989 are all associated with riots and revolution by the oppressed. I submit, however, that a careful reconstruction of these cases, similar to what I have done with Sri Lanka, will give support to my thesis. In Poland the revolution against Tsarist Russia preceded the language decrees rather than resulted from them; in South Africa the riots in Soweto brought accommodation on the linguistic front, and the subsequent war was fueled by the denial of

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

political rights to Africans; and in Moldova the law on language that was said to provoke the rebellion in Transdniester was indistinguishable from the language laws in the 13 other non-Russian republics, with none of the others bringing the Russian-speaking populations into armed conflict. The comparative speculations that have informed this section, however counterintuitive, should be sufficient to undermine the claim that language grievances are a spark that can all too easily set off incendiary ethnic wars. Good policy cannot ignore this finding.

In this section I analyze official language policies of states to see if there is a clue as to which policies are associated with the lowest levels of violence. To do so I coded all countries in the Gurr dataset on the basis of their language policies, in a variable I call LANGREGIME, short for Language Regime. There are five values for this variable, and they are characterized in the left column of Table 13.4. Examples of “1,” where there is a single official language corresponding to the ethnic majority or dominant settler group, include English in the United States, German in Austria, Hungarian in Hungary, Malay in Malaysia, and Spanish in Argentina. Examples of “2,” where there is a single (or sometimes a second) official language corresponding to a language not associated with a major ethnic group in the country, include Bahasa in Indonesia, French and English in Cameroon, and English in Kenya. This language is usually referred to as a lingua franca. Examples of “3,” where both an indigenous language and a nonindigenous language are official, include English, Hindi and state languages in India, and Hebrew, English, and Arabic in Israel. The value “3”

TABLE 13.4 Language Regimes and Rebellion—Mean Scores for Rebellion (number of cases)

Language Regime

All Cases

Where RURBASE =1

Where RURBASE =1 and Independent After 1944

All cases

1.68 (n=218)

2.10 (n=171)

2.51 (n=95)

1. Rationalization

1.32 (n=92)

1.74 (n=68)

2.92 (n=26)

2. Official lingua franca

1.60 (n=45)

1.82 (n=39)

1.86 (n=36)

3. 3±1 language formula

2.88 (n=41)

3.14 (n=37)

2.78 (n=32)

4. More than one domestic official language with no lingua franca

1.80 (n=10)

2.25 (n=8)

NA (n=0)

5. Rationalization + recognition of regional language(s)

1.20 (n=30)

1.89 (n=19)

6.0 (n=1)

NA=not applicable

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

corresponds broadly to the 3±1 model discussed in this paper. Examples of “4,” where there is more than one official language corresponding to the leading ethnic groups of the country, include German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romance in Switzerland and Pashto and Persian in Afghanistan. Examples of “5,” where there is but one official language but with recognized regional languages, include cases such as Spanish with Catalan, Basque, and Galician in Spain and Arabic with Kurdish in Iraq.

I then compared in Table 13.4 the mean REBELLION scores for each policy, under all cases and under cases where RURBASE=1. It is clear that the 3±1 model, however attractive it is from a welfare or identity point of view, is associated with higher levels of violence. This result should be taken with skepticism. For one thing, groups that have been successfully incorporated into states under the 3±1 formula (e.g., the Tamils, Gujaratis, Kannada speakers in India; the Romansch speakers in Switzerland) are not in the dataset, as they were not considered “at risk.”47 Second, minority violence could well have impelled states to accept such language regimes, which would explain the association but have the causal arrow in the wrong direction. Third, when a dummy for 3±1 is constructed and entered into the equation displayed in Table 13.2, although the coefficient is positive, it is not anywhere close to being significant.48 Nonetheless, it would be foolhardy from the point of view of policy prescription to advertise this policy as a model for other states. Meanwhile, rationalization with concessions to minorities for regional languages (a policy increasingly apparent in Western democracies) has the lowest mean score for REBELLION in the entire sample, and perhaps this is a clue as to how best to handle language grievances when they become heavily politicized (although this is what Sri Lanka did eventually but unsuccessfully).

Finally, I examined only those minorities with a rural base and in accordance with Gellner’s theory only from countries that entered into the community of states after 1944. These are the states most subject to problems establishing an official language, many having relied on the colonial language as the official language of modern government. From this set the mean score for REBELLION is 2.51. But for those with LANGREGIME=3 (the set with India as paradigm), the mean score is higher at 2.78; those with LANGREGIME=1 (rationalization) had a mean score of 2.68; meanwhile, for those with LANGREGIME=2 (the set with Kenya as paradigm), the mean score is lowest at 1.86. (The Sri Lankan Tamils are the only case where LANGREGIME=5.) This last column suggests that a single neutral lingua franca has been more peaceful than the indigenous-promoting multilingual schemes and more peaceful as well than the rationalization policies. A dummy for cases with a neutral lingua franca added to the specification for Table 13.2 has a negative

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

coefficient (i.e., this language regime lowers the expected value for rebellion), but it is not significant.49

More interesting still is the comparison of the 32 cases where LANGREGIME=3 (i.e., the 3±1 model) and examining whether the minority group living under such a language regime has its language recognized in the official language formula. The result is that groups whose languages are recognized (n=17) have a mean REBELLION score of 3.6; those whose languages are not recognized (n=15) have a mean score of 3.5. Thus, there is slightly more violence associated with recognition of a group’s language in a multilingual scheme than in keeping the language group out of the scheme altogether. In those 32 cases only 7.3 percent of the groups had any recorded language grievance. Meanwhile, in the cases where there was acceptance of a lingua franca (i.e., where LANGREGIME =2), 13.3 percent of the groups articulated language grievances. This means that bringing groups into the official language formula is not a prescription for peaceful ethnic relations and that fomenting language grievances (by ignoring a group’s plea for official recognition of its language) is not a prescription for violence.50

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The purpose of this paper was to explore the relationship between language-based political conflict and ethnic violence. The standard view in the literature is that language issues, especially when a nationalizing elite in control of a state in the modern period seeks to impose its language as the principal means of state business and social mobility, exacerbate ethnic tensions, with potential for ethnic violence. An analysis of the Gurr dataset does not support this standard view. Instead, the data support a view that language distance (between groups) and language grievances (by minorities) play no causal role in the emergence of rebellion. In fact, there is some support for the counter hypothesis, namely, that language grievances when expressed under conditions of religious tension tend to ameliorate violence. Theoretical considerations—having to do with the bureaucratization of language conflict, the ability of the state to make language commitments, and the difficult collective-action problems faced by minority-language entrepreneurs—help us make sense of the statistical findings. With the surprising statistical results and the new theoretical considerations brought to mind, a reexamination of two well-known cases of language politics—in India and Sri Lanka—gives added support to the data and the theory seeking to make sense of those data.

A necessary condition for violence to be averted, it should be emphasized, is that the state must be willing to bargain over demands articulated by language activists in society. In India the central government’s

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

unwillingness to provoke the Telugu speakers into unyielding opposition is key to the peaceful resolution of that conflict. Violent confrontations between Marathis and Gujaratis in Bombay, and between Nagas and Assamese in the northeast, were also defused in part because the central government went to the bargaining table and was willing to make concessions. In Sri Lanka the government’s passage of the Tamil Language Acts of 1966, as well as the constitutional guarantees of 1972 and 1978, helped limit the range of the civil war mostly to the northeast of the island. My argument is not that even with government intransigence language conflicts will reduce the likelihood of large-scale violence; rather I believe that language conflicts allow for extensive and successful bargaining without making it seem as if either side is a traitor to its group’s interests. But absent utter intransigence by government authorities, the hypothesized route from discriminatory language policy to ethnic civil war and state breakdown is not supported by the comparative data.

Willingness to bargain with minorities does not imply democracy. The MAR dataset includes 40 cases where DEMOCRACY was of low quality, MAXLANG was substantial, yet REBELLION did not reach a critical threshold. These include the Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Taiwanese in Taiwan, the Berbers in Algeria, and the Roma in Croatia. There are also two cases with high levels of DEMOCRACY where MAXLANG was also substantial, yet REBELLION has been significant.51 These include the Bodos in India and the Kurds in Turkey. Democratic institutions are neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure official-language bargaining. In fact, statistical evidence does not allow us to reject the hypothesis that democratic institutions play no role in ameliorating or exacerbating language-based conflict.

Even more surprising, there is no evidence that sensitive language policies are nostrums for ethnic arousals. For countries that received independence after World War II, bureaucracies usually operated with the colonial language. Leaders of many groups expressed firm desires to have their languages recognized as official and relied on as media of instruction in state schools. Yet the sensitive granting of these desires did not lower the likelihood of violent rebellion, and the failure to do so for some groups did not raise that likelihood. Grievances over language were expressed under all forms of policy; they were expressed regardless of whether the group’s language was represented in multilingual official formulas. Yet when those grievances were expressed, the trend was not to enhance the chances of violence but (if anything) to reduce them.

The principal policy recommendation of this paper is that governments should be encouraged to allow groups to express language demands on the political stage. In fact, the Indian case shows that the payoff for peace is enhanced if the government rewards groups with a variety of

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

concessions (e.g., jobs) for making language-based claims on the state. Essential as well is that the government must assure the minority groups that the dominant group will not take minority expression of language grievances as a pretext for genocide against them. In sum, governments must be willing to engage in political and bureaucratic conflicts over language issues. Meanwhile, the substance of any particular language framework has no bearing on peaceful outcomes.

This recommendation has special relevance for the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. In 1989 all of these republics passed new language laws that reversed the tides, giving greater official status to the republican language vis-à-vis Russian. In some republics, after independence in 1991, these laws became more stringent still. In 1999 Anatol Lieven of the International Institute for Strategic Studies excoriated the Latvian parliament for its measures that, he claims, “would have virtually banished the Russian language from public life.” Holding up the specter of Kosovo, he argued that because the proposed law embodied “gratuitous provocations” the West had a “special duty to help prevent such legislation.” The argument of this paper is not that the Latvian legislation was fair minded. It was not. Rather, the argument is that the “special provocations” were more likely to drive the Russian-speaking population in Latvia to political action rather than guerrilla action. The international gendarmerie must distinguish those policies that are merely unfair from actions that plant the seeds of civil war. The analysis in this paper helps make that distinction.52

Policy makers—for states that face language conflict and for states that provide support for an international gendarmerie when ethnic conflict spills over into ethnic violence—should be made aware that language conflict, even if it is not threatening to states or democratic regimes, can be extremely dangerous for incumbents. Leaders of disaffected language groups have the skills and intellectual resources to mobilize constituencies that are outraged by current language policies. Incumbents on the unpopular side of a language conflict can be ruthlessly thrown out of office. But this does not mean that language conflict is dangerous to democratic governance or civil peace. In fact, language conflict, when not directly and brutally repressed by fearful incumbents, tends to be fought out in translation committees, school boards, and bureaucracies. If language entrepreneurs are given the chance to mobilize their constituencies, incumbents might lose their positions, but partisans of other languages are not likely to lose their lives.

To be sure, people have died while participating in language-based riots. But the data in this paper demonstrate that it is far more likely that language grievances will result in political protests than military action. Politics is the realm where intense conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

Policy analysts need to recognize that the politicization of language issues is not a danger signal for ethnic war. In fact, the politicization of language ameliorates the violent potential of religion-based conflict. To understand that the politicization of language issues may be the straw that strengthens the camel’s back would be to take an important step in understanding language, politics, and ethnic violence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Much of the work that forms the basis of this paper was done in collaboration with James D.Fearon, who helped me think through the implications of the data presented herein. I would also like to thank Kanchan Chandra and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita for comments on a draft and the “Chicago on the Hudson” seminar (John Roemer, Adam Przeworski, Jon Elster, Steven Lukes, John Ferejohn, Brian Barry, and Stephen Holmes) for showing me how to better specify my argument. Finally, Paul Stern coherently conveyed the often contradictory advice given me by the review committee organized by the National Research Council.

This chapter also appeared in Archive Européenes de Sociologie 2000 (41):97–137.

NOTES

1  

Selig S.Harrison, ed. (1957), The Most Dangerous Decades: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Language Policy in Multi-lingual States (New York: Language and Communication Research Center, Columbia University).

2  

The Ocalan quote is from a report in The New York Times, June 24, 1999, by Stephen Kinzer.

3  

Clifford Geertz (1973), “The Integrative Revolution” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books), pp. 256–257.

4  

For a full description of the database, see Ted R.Gurr (1993), Minorities at Risk (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace). There are several worrisome methodological pitfalls in the construction and coding of this database, discussed in James Fearon and David Laitin’s proposal to remedy them, funded by the National Science Foundation, grant no. 9876530, “Minorities at Risk Database and Explaining Ethnic Violence.” The proposed changes will surely have some impact on the relationships discussed in this paper. The findings herein can therefore only be considered preliminary.

5  

Ernest Gellner (1983), Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press).

6  

Max Weber (1968), Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 71, 655, 809–838, and 1108 for discussions of different forms of rationalization.

7  

Eugen Weber (1976), Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press); Abram de Swaan (1988), In Care of the State (New York: Oxford University Press), chap. 3.

8  

This is a summary of David D.Laitin et al. (1994), “Language and the Construction of States: The Case of Catalonia in Spain,” Politics and Society, vol. 22, no. 1 (March), pp. 3–30.

9  

Juan Linz (1974), “Politics in a Multilingual Society with a Dominant World Lan

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

   

guage,” in Les états multilingues: problèmes et solutions, J.G.Savard and R.Vegneault, eds. (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval), pp. 367–444.

10  

The Habsburg case is an archetype for the foundational figures in contemporary theories of nationalism, especially those who lived in it at the time of its dissolution: Hans Kohn, Karl Deutsch, Eric Hobsbawm, and Ernest Gellner.

11  

REBELLION, unless otherwise specified, is the variable “rebel90x” in the MAR dataset, reflecting a value of the group’s rebellion against the state for the years 1990–1995.

12  

See David D.Laitin (2000), “What Is a Language Community?,” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 142–155.

13  

Barbara F.Grimes, ed. (1996), Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 13th ed. (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).

14  

For a discussion of the methodological problems in using a measure of language distance, see Laitin, What Is a Language Community?

15  

Gurr, Minorities at Risk, p. 18.

16  

Given the limitations of the MAR dataset, where language grievances are coded only for the 1990s and the latest scores for rebellion are also in the 1990s, I cannot now rule out the interpretation of the forthcoming results as rebellion causing a reduction in language grievances. This is rather implausible, and subsequent updating of the database will allow me to assure myself that the causal arrows as I interpret them are correct.

17  

James D.Fearon and David D.Laitin (1999), “Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence Since 1945,” paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Ga.

18  

Users of the MAR database will want to know: there is no rural base for rebellion (RURBASE=0) if the group is primarily urban (REGS=1), or if the group is widely dispersed (REG6=1), if the group did not migrate to the country until the twentieth century (TRADITN=4 or 5), or if the group members (even if it was primarily rural) were the descendants of slaves or are travelers (Romani). Meanwhile, the group was considered to have a rural base (RURBASE=1) if the minority group could trace its origins in the country to the period before state formation (TRADITN=1) or if the group had at least a majority concentrated in one region of the state (GROUPCON=2 or 3).

19  

Other interaction terms—with race and class in particular—would be feasible elaborations of this analysis. Getting an objective measure of race prevents an exploration of its dynamic. I lack data on the class composition of the ethnic groups and cannot explore its impact here.

20  

The mirror is also true: religious grievances reduce the rebellious potential of language grievances, but this effect is far less strong statistically than the one reported in the text.

21  

See David Laitin (1989), “Language Policy and Political Strategy in India,” Policy Sciences, vol. 22, p. 426.

22  

Under such conditions violence is more likely, as James D.Fearon argues in “Ethnic War as a Commitment Problem,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1994.

23  

This is the source of humor in Woody Allen’s Bananas, when the leader of a Latin American guerrilla army, at the moment of victory, with cigar in mouth, announces that from that point on Swedish will be the sole language of all communication in the island nation.

24  

My research career has been devoted to this dilemma. I focus on the identity aspects of language in David D.Laitin (1977), Politics, Language and Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). I focus on the strategic rationality of defection in David D.Laitin (1988), “Language Games,” Comparative Politics, vol. 20, pp. 289–302. I focus on the “Janus-facedness” of culture, which has both an identity and a strategic component, in David D.

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

   

Laitin (1986), Hegemony and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). In this paper the identity aspect of culture plays only a bit part because the dependent variable is “violence” (where strategic action is more important) rather than “assimilation” (where identity issues play a major role).

25  

David D.Laitin (1986), Hegemony and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

26  

For a compilation of the details for this aspect of corpus planning, see Government of Andhra Pradesh (1968), White Paper on Official Language (Telugu): Preparation of Authoritative Texts (Hyderabad: Government Secretariat Press).

27  

K.Ravi (1982), “Regional Separatist Agitations in Andhra Pradesh,” in A.Prasanna Kumar, V.Linga Murty, and K.Ravi, eds., Government and Politics in Andhra Pradesh (New Delhi: S.Chand), pp. 54–65.

28  

R.V.R.Chandrasekhara Rao (1979), “Conflicting Roles of Language and Regionalism in an Indian State: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh” and Dagmar Bernstorff (1979), “Region and Nation: The Telengana Movement’s Dual Identity,” in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp, Political Identity in South Asia (London: Centre of South Asian Studies, SOAS, University of London), pp. 138–150 and 151–169. See also Myron Weiner (1978), Sons of the Soil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), chap. 5.

29  

Paul R.Brass (1974), Language, Religion and Politics in North India (London: Cambridge University Press), p. 430.

30  

Jyotirindra Das Gupta (1970), Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 259, 266, 268, 270.

31  

David Laitin (1989), “Language Policy and Political Strategy in India,” Policy Sciences, vol. 22, pp. 415–436.

32  

Stanley J.Tambiah (1986), Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 5–7, and Gannath Obeyesekere in a letter to the New York Times (April 24, 1984) hopefully lay to rest any lingering notion of such a divide in Sri Lanka.

33  

Tambiah, Sri Lanka, pp. 58–60.

34  

Stanley Tambiah (1992), Buddhism Betrayed? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 49–57.

35  

Tambiah, Sri Lanka, pp. 20–27; Stanley Tambiah (1996), Leveling Crowds (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 100.

36  

Tambiah, Sri Lanka, pp. 71–78; Tambiah, Leveling Crowds, p. 86.

37  

M.R.Narayan Swamy (1994), Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerillas (Delhi: Konark Publishers), p. 21.

38  

S.G.Samarasinghe (1996), “Language Policy in Public Administration, 1956–1994” in R.G.G.Olcott Gunasekera, S.G.Samarasinghe, and V.Vamadevan, eds., National Language Policy in Sri Lanka (Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies), p. 98.

39  

R.G.G.Olcott Gunasekera (1996), “The Implementation of the Official Language Policy, 1956–1970” in Gunasekera, op. cit, p. 32.

40  

Samarasinghe, op. cit., p. 105

41  

Gunasekera, op. cit., p. 45.

42  

Ibid., pp. 58–62.

43  

Samarasinghe, op. cit., pp. 79–91.

44  

The Houdini-like leader of the Liberation Tigers, V.Prabhakaran, became a militant largely because of the “standardization” decrees that were designed to advantage Sri Lankans who took official examinations in Sinhalese. In this way, language laws took young Tamils out of the education stream and into the guerrilla river. This relationship is incomplete, however. First, Prabhakaran had a fixation for explosives well before he thought about Eelam. Second, recruitment into militant groups was extremely slow until 1983, when the LTTE had fewer than 50 hard-core members. But when rumors spread in 1983 that the

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×

   

Indian government was funding and training Tamil guerrillas, recruitment skyrocketed. At that time, however, standardization was hardly an issue. See Swamy, op. cit, chap. 4, and pp. ix, 96.

45  

Ibid., p. 294.

46  

Stanley Tambiah, comments at the National Research Council seminar to review a draft of this paper, October 22, 1998.

47  

James Fearon and I, in the context of our National Science Foundation grant, will include some groups not considered to be at risk in future analyses and in doing so may pick up the violence-decreasing aspects of the 3±1 missed in Table 13.4.

48  

B=.475264; SE B=.467966.

49  

B=−.438306; SE B=.449604. This is when the dummy for 3±1 is also in the equation.

50  

There are insufficient numbers of cases to analyze LANGREGIME=4 or LANGREGIME=5 for groups with RURBASE=1 living in countries that entered the world system after 1945 (YRENTRY>1945). Even under these conditions the bivariate correlation between REBELLION and MAXLANG is weakly negative.

51  

Users of the MAR dataset might want to note that the threshold for democracy of high quality is ndem89=8; the threshold for substantial language grievances is MAXLANG >1; and the critical threshold for REBELLION is rebel90x>3.

52  

For Lieven’s position, see “No Russian Spoken Here,” The New York Times, July 16, 1999.

Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 531
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 532
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 533
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 534
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 535
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 536
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 537
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 538
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 539
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 540
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 541
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 542
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 543
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 544
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 545
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 546
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 547
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 548
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 549
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 550
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 551
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 552
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 553
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 554
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 555
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 556
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 557
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 558
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 559
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 560
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 561
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 562
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 563
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 564
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 565
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 566
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 567
Suggested Citation:"Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw that Strengthens the Camel's Back." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.
×
Page 568
Next: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution »
International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War Get This Book
×
Buy Hardback | $77.95 Buy Ebook | $59.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

The end of the Cold War has changed the shape of organized violence in the world and the ways in which governments and others try to set its limits. Even the concept of international conflict is broadening to include ethnic conflicts and other kinds of violence within national borders that may affect international peace and security. What is not yet clear is whether or how these changes alter the way actors on the world scene should deal with conflict:

  • Do the old methods still work?
  • Are there new tools that could work better?
  • How do old and new methods relate to each other?

International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War critically examines evidence on the effectiveness of a dozen approaches to managing or resolving conflict in the world to develop insights for conflict resolution practitioners. It considers recent applications of familiar conflict management strategies, such as the use of threats of force, economic sanctions, and negotiation. It presents the first systematic assessments of the usefulness of some less familiar approaches to conflict resolution, including truth commissions, "engineered" electoral systems, autonomy arrangements, and regional organizations. It also opens up analysis of emerging issues, such as the dilemmas facing humanitarian organizations in complex emergencies. This book offers numerous practical insights and raises key questions for research on conflict resolution in a transforming world system.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!