From Claims to Violence: Signaling, Outbidding, and Escalation in Ethnic Conflict

• Author: Lars-Erik Cederman,Manuel Vogt,Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
• Published date: 01 August 2021
• Date: 01 August 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002721996436
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

From Claims to Violence:

Signaling, Outbidding,

and Escalation in Ethnic

Conflict

Manuel Vogt

1

, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch

2,3

,

and Lars-Erik Cederman

4

Abstract

Do radical political demands increase the risk of ethnic civil conflict? And why do

ethnic movements make radical demands in the first place? We contend that when

movements are fragmented, individual organizations use far-reaching claims relative

to the status quo to attract attention from the government, boost intra-

organizational discipline, and outbid rivals. Yet, such radical claims also increase

the risk of conflict escalation. We test our arguments at both the ethnic group and

organizational levels, using a new dataset on ethno-political organizations and their

political demands. Our results show that the scope of demands increases the more

organizations exist within an ethnic movement and that radical demands increase the

risk of civil conflict onset. This effect is specific to the dyadic government-movement

interaction, irrespective of other ethnic groups in the country. Moreover, at the

organizational level, radicalization in demands increases the likelihood that an

organization becomes engaged in civil conflict.

Keywords

civil wars, internal armed conflict, conflict, rebellion

1

University College London, United Kingdom

2

University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom

3

Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway

4

ETH Zu¨rich, Zu¨ rich, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Manuel Vogt, University College London,29/31 Tavistock Square, LondonWC1H 9QU, United Kingdom.

Email: m.vogt@ucl.ac.uk

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(7-8) 1278-1307

ªThe Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002721996436

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Introduction

In October 2017, the latent conflict between the Cameroonian government and

Anglophone opposition groups escalated into deadly violence, causing hundreds

of fatalities. After initial calls for language and administrative rights in the Anglo-

phone regions were resisted by the government, the dissidents made further demands

for political autonomy and an independent Anglophone state of “Ambazonia,” pro-

voking heavy-handed government repression. Do radical political demands increase

the risk of ethnic civil conflict? And why do ethnic movements make radical

demands in the first place? Recent research highlights the impact of actor fragmen-

tation (Cunningham 2013) and organizational rivalries (Cunningham, Bakke, and

Seymour 2012; Krause 2014; Pearlman 2008/09) on conflict dynamics, but has not

analyzed in depth how radicalization in op position demands intervenes in these

processes. Similarly, existing studies show an effect of inter-group inequality on

ethnic civil conflict (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013; Stewart 2008), but do

not consider how claims made by marginalized groups affect the escalation process

leading from inequality to conflict outbreak.

To address this gap, we develop a theory of conflict escalation in ethno-political

mobilization that highlights the importance of claims as signaling devices within

opposition movements and in their interaction with state governments. With a higher

number of organizations within an ethnic movement, individual organizations have

incentives to make radical claims to attract attention and possible concessions from

the government. In the face of movement-internal competition, radical claims also

serve to boost intra-organizational discipline and outbid contenders for the same

popular support. Yet, such radical claims increase the risk of violent conflict escala-

tion through the perceived threat to the government, by empowering hardliners on

the government side, and by provoking repressive measures that may fuel anti-

government violence.

Our study is the first to measure the scope of political demands at the level of

individual organizations, including both violent and non-violent organizations, in a

globally representative sample. We define the scope of demands as a function of

distance from the status quo on two different dimensions: governmental power and

territorial rights. The larger this distance, the more radical the demand is. We

introduce a new dataset on ethno-political organizations, EPR-Organizations

(EPR-O), which covers a random sample of forty countries over the period 1946

to 2013 and identifies individual organizations representing groups in the Ethnic

Power Relations (EPR) dataset (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010; Vogt et al.

2015), as well as their distinct claims. These data allow us to examine the causes and

consequences of radical demands at the levels of both ethnic groups and organiza-

tions. Since EPR-O covers both violent and non-violent actors, we can track the

political demands of organizations that never become involved in violence, as well

as organizations’ claims before they engage in violence, and thus evaluate how the

scope of demands affects the risk of ethnic civil conflict.

Vogt et al. 1279