5 - A Theory of Identities, Political Choice, and Conflict

Summary

Chapter 5 presents the second, macro-level component of the book’s theory; it explains identities, political choice, and conflict. Given that ethnicity and religion generate different preferences, how do elites make use of that information to serve their own political ends during conflict? I present a model to demonstrate that elites can either play an identity card to mobilize collective support for particular strategies or they can promote particular strategies in order to mobilize followers along optimal identity lines. The chapter outlines three strategic interests that political elites might pursue when institutions have broken down and conflict persists: territorial control, moral legitimacy, and international support. It then explains how leaders can use ethnicity and religion differentially in the service of those strategic interests. Group size may still be the primary consideration, but in many cases in Africa, ethnic and religious cleavages overlap, leaving leaders with the same coalition size irrespective of the identity type they mobilize. Chapter 5 explains how ethnicity and religion can be exploited in contexts of both overlapping and crosscutting cleavages.