Horizontal inequalities and violent conflict: The case of Cote d’Ivoire

Published: 1/Jan/2005
Source: Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford

Author: Arnim Langer

Abstract:

In order to explain the emergence of ethnic violence, scholars from different disciplines have focused on different factors, such as the role of ethnicity, the individual gain from civil war, the relative deprivation explanations, and the role of ethnic elites, and proposed different conflict narratives. Although these approaches focus on different aspects and use different explanatory variables to explain the emergence of violent group mobilization, they are complementary and overlapping in many important ways. In order to explain the descent of Côte d’Ivoire into violence at the end of the 1990s, this paper focuses on the relationship between inter-ethnic or horizontal inequalities and the emergence of violent group mobilization.

Download from QEH website.

Themes: Discrimination, Ethnic/Racial/Religious
Regions: West Africa, Côte d'Ivoire
Year: 2005