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Creation of Social Order in Ethnic Conflict

University of Hawaii, keisuken{at}hawaii.edu

This article develops a model of random matching with costly monitoring to demonstrate that the threat of ethnic conflict can function to create an in-group policing mechanism which helps enforce inter-ethnic social order. Instead of regarding ethnic conflict as a form of collective penalty on an unidentified wrongdoer and his ethnic brethren (Fearon and Laitin, 1996), we argue that ethnic conflict is triggered by a wrongdoing because avengers seek to take advantage of in-group networks for detecting and punishing the culprit. Our theory predicts that the success of inter-ethnic cooperation hinges on the quality of in-group policing. As a consequence, a group with lower-quality policing tends to have more frequent and longer disputes with other groups.

Key Words: costly monitoring • ethnic conflict • in-group policing • social matching game • social order

Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 21, No. 3, 365-394 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0951629809103970


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