Complexity and Ethnopolitical Mobilization

The study of ethnicity and politics has generated a vast, informative literature over the past 30+ years, covering the globe and reaching into the past. Unfortunately, even a brief survey of that literature makes clear the striking absence of agreement on some of the most fundamental aspects of the phenomenon, including: the nature of ethnicity; the relevant historical timeframe for evaluation; the appropriate level(s) of analysis; and the character of ethnopolitical activism, among many others. This paper applies the heuristic model of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) to ethnopolitical mobilization to clarify the relationships between factors at the international, state, and group level to ethnic political activism. More specifically, conceptualizing ethnopolitical mobilization as a process occurring in qualitatively distinct phases, CAS focuses analysis on those instances of phase-transitions, hypothesizing that at such critical moments the relationships of various factors, including the mobilization itself, may change. Should this hypothesis hold, this may explain the failure of many statistical models to provide detailed understanding of ethnicity and politics, reflecting much of the excellent earlier literature while pointing towards a potentially fruitful focus of future study. This paper represents the early stages of a manuscript. As such, the ideas presented here are preliminary explorations of reconceptualizing ethnopolitical mobilization with an eye towards retaining the richness of case-studies while moving towards meaningful explanatory models. Any comments you have are warmly appreciated. Do not cite without permission.