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Cited by 1,606

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

Explaining Interethnic Cooperation

Fearon, James D., Laitin, David D.·1996·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.2307/2945838
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Abstract

Though both journalists and the academic literature on ethnic conflict give the opposite impression, peaceful and even cooperative relations between ethnic groups are far more common than is large-scale violence. We seek to explain this norm of interethnic peace and how it occasionally breaks down, arguing that formal and informal institutions usually work to contain or “cauterize” disputes between individual members of different groups. Using a social matching game model, we show that local-level interethnic cooperation can be supported in essentially two ways. In spiral equilibria, disputes between individuals are correctly expected to spiral rapidly beyond the two parties, and fear of this induces cooperation “on the equilibrium path.” In in-group policing equilibria, individuals ignore transgressions by members of the other group, correctly expecting that the culprits will be identified and sanctioned by their own ethnic brethren. A range of examples suggests that both equilibria occur empirically and have properties expected from the theoretical analysis.

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Metadata

Authors
Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. D.
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
1996-12
Volume
90
Issue
4
Pages
715-735
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.2307/2945838
OpenAlex
W2005474264
Cited by
1,606
References
0
FWCI
76.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.