Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: The Rational Choice Perspective

Date
-
Event Sponsor
The Munro Lectureship Fund and The Lane Center
Speaker

Sangick "Sunny" Jeon, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

 

Abstract

Many qualitative studies of ethnic violence attribute conflict to the presence of "middleman minorities" -- a specific type of commercially-oriented ethnic minority group that acts as an economic intermediary between domestic and foreign markets, and grows to control a disproportionate share of the local economy. This paper uses a large-N dataset on the outbreak of ethnic violence in 112 developing countries, 1940-1999, to show that these claims about middleman minorities do not hold up empirically, and that in fact, they are associated with less conflict than minority groups that are similar on all other dimensions. To explain this variation, this paper develops a general model of decentralized intergroup cooperation to illustrate how economic gains from ethnic complementarities might promote peaceful relations across groups by increasing the rewards to cooperation, thereby rationalizing the costs of quasi-formal social institutions that can effectively moderate problems of opportunism across ethnic boundaries.

 

Biography

Sangick "Sunny" Jeon is a Ph.D. Candidate specializing in Comparative Politics and International Relations. He is currently completing a dissertation project that uses formal, empirical, and experimental methods to identify and test strategies for reducing intergroup biases and supporting interethnic cooperation in fractionalized groups, organizations, communities, and societies. His previous work using network analysis to study American legal development has been published in Political Analysis and Social Networks, and cited in The Economist and The Atlantic. Sunny is currently on the job market, seeking jobs in Comparative Politics and International Relations.