Research indicates that institutionalized cleavages and a multiparty system discourage ethnic outbidding and identification with tribal, localized groups.
To prove this point, constructivist findings suggest that modernization, language consolidation, and border-drawing, weakened the tendency to identify with micro-scale identity categories.
To activate her membership in the West Indian or Black categories, she may decide to underscore attributes like her birth in Trinidad or her skin color, respectively.
[7] The former factor acknowledges how many descent-based attributes, including skin color, are "sticky," i.e., restrictive of nominal identities and not easily changeable.
[27] They nonetheless differ in one noteworthy respect: Fearon and Laitin's approach places a premium on "cultural attributes," a concept which entails traditions, historical memories and legacies, religious and spiritual beliefs, etc.
[41] One article written by Jóhanna Kristín Birnir posits that because new democracies operate in low-information environments—per the creation of novel, undefined parties—ethnic cleavages become an especially important source of information for voters.
[54] In Chandra's telling, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) moved to activate Hindu nationalism during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
[57] To remain viable, political parties must be able to attract diverse groups and compensate for losses incurred by the activation of a caste, religious, or some other identity; hence the moderation.
[60] According to Daniel Posner, one-party elections highlight local, tribal identities, whereas multiparty contests bring larger identities—be they regional, religious, or linguistic—to the fore.
[64] In Kenya and Zambia, the adoption of a multiparty system boded a shift in the types of identities that political actors accentuated.
[66] He arrives at this conclusion by identifying every individual who was a parliamentary candidate before and after the adoption,[67] and coded for those who belonged to the largest linguistic (Zambia) and ethnoregional (Kenya) groups within their respective electoral districts.
[70] He notes that colonial missionary, education, and labor practices winnowed the number of Zambian languages to four main ones: Bemba, Lozi, Nyanja, and Tonga.
"[75] Furthermore, the company explicitly targeted them because their ancestral lands—in the northeast of Northern Rhodesia—were far removed from competing mines in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.
[77] As Posner observes, border-drawing asymmetrically distributed the population shares of Chewas and Tumbukas, and generated the incentive structure of interethnic competition.
[80] To be clear, Chewas and Tumbukas in Malawi and Zambia share similarities by and large,[81] especially because colonial authorities established the Malawi-Zambia border inattentively in terms of ethnic distribution.
[82] After confirming the stark attitudes through a field experiment, wherein he surveyed villagers who live near the border,[83] Posner compares each group's share of the total population for both countries.
[85] Zambia's unique demographic situation incentivized Chewas and Tumbukas to form a coalition together—given how each was too small to be viable politically—and construct an alliance as "Easterners.
[96] Fearon and Laitin's findings review several books—including Gérard Prunier's The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide and Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War[97]—and glean the conclusion that the first and second channels inadequately or unclearly explain ethnic violence.