Identifying Potential Ethnic Conflict

Intrastate communitarian strife, dubbed ethnic conflict, has gained attention in the aftermath of the Cold War. This report outlines a model for anticipating the occurrence of communitarian and ethnic conflict. The model is not a mechanistic tool, but a process-based heuristic device with a threefold purpose. One, to order the analyst's thinking about the logic and dynamics of potential ethnically based violence and to aid in defining the information-collection requirements of such an analysis. Two, to provide a conceptual framework about how ethnic grievances form and group mobilization occurs and how these could lead to violence; and three to assist the intelligence community with the long-range assessment of possible ethnic strife. The theoretical model explains how the potential for strife should be understood, transformed; and how extant state capacities interact through a process of strategic bargaining with mobilized groups to produce varying degrees of strife.