Contagion processes of ethnic violence: Group inspiration and government strategic reaction

Existing research has considered the effect of domestic unrest on repression and the effect of repression on subsequent unrest. However, governments’ strategic incentives to use repression as a targeted measure in order to prevent – as opposed to respond to – unrest altogether are understood little. This thesis analyses armed ethnic conflict as well as government repression targeted at ethnic groups in order to prevent them from rebelling. More specifically, this thesis consists of three parts. The first part analyses the effect of information about foreign conflicts on the likelihood of domestic conflict. Here, the argument is that information about foreign conflicts that is transmitted via mass media can inspire groups with similar grievances like the foreign group in conflict to take up arms. This argument is tested empirically in a large-n study on the country level. The second part analyses the concept of repression as a pre-emptive strategy. In this part I argue that governments use group-specific repression to strike a perfect balance between domestic ethnic groups’ costs and benefits for fighting in order to prevent them from taking up arms in the most efficient way. Quantitative data on group-specific repression levels is used to empirically test this argument. The third part analyses government reactions to information about foreign conflicts transmitted via mass media in order to prevent domestic unrest. I argue here that governments are aware of the mechanism discussed in the first part and use repression in order to prevent conflict contagion altogether. Again, this argument is tested empirically using group-level repression data.