Learning from Adversity: Ethnic Ties and Ethnic Domination

Ravi Bhavnani, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This paper specifies a novel framework to explore how rival ethnic groups in one country learn from threats to ethnic kin in a neighboring country and from threats made by nominal rivals at home. In particular, the paper explores how a combination of external and internal threats results in animosity and violence, and argues that the lessons from these events are internalized differently across groups, leading to distinct trajectories of ethnic domination. The framework developed in the paper is formalized using an agent-based computational model which generates a range of outcomes: (i) domination by kin ethnic majorities; (ii) domination by rival ethnic majorities; (iii) domination by an ethnic minority when ethnic kin in the contiguous state constitute a dominated minority; (iv) domination by rival ethnic minorities; and (v) domination by kin ethnic minorities in contiguous states. I analyze (v) in greater detail to understand the puzzle of minority domination in both Rwanda and Burundi: namely, why a Hutu majority that was able to take control of the state from a dominant minority in Rwanda failed to retain power in the long run; and why a dominant Tutsi minority in neighboring Burundi was never dislodged from power by the dominated majority?

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