The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation

Description

The wave of ethnic conflict that has swept across parts of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa has led to many political observers to fear that these conflicts are contagious. Initial outbreaks in such places as Bosnia, Chechnya and Rwanda, if not contained, appear capable of setting off epidemics of catastrophic proportions. In this volume, the editors have organized an ambitious, sophisticated exploration of both the origins and spread of ethnic conflict. The editors and contributors argue that ethnic conflict is not caused directly by intergroup differences or centuries old feuds and that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not simply uncork ethnic passions long surpressed. They look instead at how anxieties over security, competition for resources, breakdown in communication with the government, and the inability to make enduring commitments lead ethnic groups into conflict, and they consider the strategic interactions that underlie ethnic conflict and its effective management. How, why and when do ethnic conflicts either diffuse by precipitating similar conflicts elsewhere or escalate by bringing in outside parties? How can such transnational ethnic conflicts

David A. Lakeis Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century and the coeditor of Strategic Choice and International Relations, both forthcoming from Princeton. Donald Rothchild is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is a coeditor of Racial Bargaining in Independent Kenya: State Versus Ethnic Claims and a coauthor of Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa.

"This work . . . significantly advances the scholarly literature in thefield and, in doing so, opens new prospects for policy analysis as well."-Roy Licklider, Rutgers University