13:15 - 15:30
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Meri Dankenbring
Discussant/s:
Constantin Ruhe
Meeting Room P

Andreas Juon
Inclusion, recognition, and inter-group comparisons: The effects of power-sharing institutions on grievances

Marina Petrova
Civil Society Organizations and Protests' Escalation to Civil War in Non-Democracies

Benoit Siberdt
State Dissolution and Societal Breakdown: Exploring Onset and Violence in Civil War

Meri Dankenbring
Occurrence of Extremist Religious Ideologies in Civil War
Inclusion, recognition, and inter-group comparisons: The effects of power-sharing institutions on grievances
Andreas Juon
International Conflict Research Group, ETH Zurich

Extant evidence suggests that sharing power in government with minorities reduces their participation in conflict by alleviating their grievances. Yet, it remains unclear in what form and to what degree power-sharing should be institutionalized in places which lack inclusive norms in the first place. Moreover, direct attitudinal evidence for the grievance mechanism remains rare. In this article, I address these gaps. First, I argue that constitutionally-enshrined power-sharing which explicitly recognizes minorities is most likely to reassure them, prevent their perception of injustice, and alleviate their grievances. Second, I argue that minorities assess their status with respect to specific reference categories, rather than 'in a vacuum'. Hence, a lower degree of power-sharing than their peers in the same country, region, and transnational kin should increase their grievances, irrespective of its absolute level. I test my expectations in a series of hierarchical multi-level models. These make use of the most extensive combination of mass survey data used in the study of inclusive institutions and attitudes so far. By highlighting the importance of institutional design and inter-group comparisons, my results have significant implications for policy in multi-ethnic societies and for the scholarly literature on accommodation and grievances more generally.