POLS 3490 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Rationality, Barry Posen, John Mueller
23 Sep 2016
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Lecture 4: ethnicity as a source of conflict i. Debates between realists and liberals or skeptics and believers over the solutions to conflicts. They all acknowledge that there are several sources of conflict but they tend to disagree on the solutions. Debates over the significance of each of the sources. Sometimes this falls along the lines of skeptics and believers. Collier sees greed as a source of conflict; For posen, identity matters, for mueller it"s not really about ethnicity at all. An ethnic group: signifies a group that has a shared identity of persecution, religion, culture, language, etc. Anyone can define themselves as an ethnic group. One source says a majority of post-wwii civil wars 64% have divided along ethnic lines. Realists see identity as something that is more-or-less permanent. Liberals and believers tend to be constructivists. Identity is temporary and partition is not necessary. Ethnicities can live together peacefully and even intermarry.
