아프리카ㆍ중동

Statistical models of civil war onset are often unsupportive of a link between measures of culturaldemography and conflict. This study suggests that this is in part because most studies fail toaccount for what factors make demographic cleavages salient, such as policies of exclusion andrepression against growing minorities that are threatening to incumbent regimes. A comparison ofCôte d’Ivoire and Ghana is used to shed light on this process. Based on a state of the art statisticalmodel of civil war onset, the countries had strikingly similar conflict risk in the early 2000s, butconflict only erupted only in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002. An important factor to explain this is theexclusion and repression in the Ivorian case, spurred by a perceived increase in the northernMuslim population, vs the more accommodative policy in neighboring Ghana. Implementinglessons from this study could improve future statistical models of civil war.