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STRUCTURES OF ETHNICCONFLICT: REVOLUTIONVERSUS SECESSION IN RWANDAAND SRI LANKAT. David Mason aa University of North TexasPublished online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: T. David Mason (2003) STRUCTURES OF ETHNIC CONFLICT:REVOLUTION VERSUS SECESSION IN RWANDA AND SRI LANKA, Terrorism and PoliticalViolence, 15:4, 83-113, DOI: 10.1080/09546550390450492

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STRUCTURES OF ETHNIC CONFLICT:REVOLUTION VERSUS SECESSION IN RWANDA

AND SRI LANKA

T. David MasonUniversity of North Texas

A structural framework of ethnic politics is presented, contrastingthe patterns of inter-ethnic relations found in ranked versusunranked systems of ethnic stratification. This framework allowsus to account for why ethnic conflict erupts in some cases but notothers, and why that conflict takes the form of ethnic revolutionin some situations and ethnic separatism in others. This frame-work’s explanatory utility is illustrated with a comparison ofcase studies: why ethnic separatism emerged in Sri Lanka whileethnic revolution occurred in Rwanda.

The end of the Cold War has heightened public awareness of theproliferation of ethnically based conflicts within and between nations.No region of the world nor any type of political system—fromdemocracies to dictatorships—has been immune to the bloody con-sequences of ethnic strife. The proliferation of research that seeksto explain and predict this phenomenon has ranged from grievancebased models to structural theories to rational choice explanations.This paper can by no means resolve the theoretical and empiricalissues that have emerged in this body of research. I will attempt todistill from the last three decades of research a structural frameworkof ethnic politics that, hopefully, will allow us to account for whyethnic conflict erupts in some cases but not others, and why thatconflict takes the form of ethnic revolution in some situations andethnic separatism in others. This framework can inform the analysisof individual case studies, and I illustrate that here by applying thisframework to the analysis of ethnic revolution in Rwanda and ethnicseparatism in Sri Lanka. It can also inform systematic analysis ofempirical data on ethnic conflict.1

The analysis begins with a discussion of two major structuralpatterns of inter-ethnic relations: ranked versus unranked systems ofethnic stratification. In ranked systems, the different ethnic groupsare intermixed geographically, and economic status coincides with

Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol.15, No.4 (Winter 2003), pp.83�113

Copyright � Taylor and Francis, Inc., 2003

DOI: 10.1080/09546550390450492

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ethnicity. There is one dominant group and one subordinate group,and interactions between groups takes on the character of apatron-client system. In an unranked system, ethnic groups live inrelatively distinct territorial enclaves. Each ethnic group has its ownseparate system of social stratification. Interactions between thegroups more nearly approximate international relations than thepatron-client relations typical of ranked systems. Variations inthe structure of inter-ethnic relations in a nation affect the way thebenefits of development are distributed between ethnic groups. Assuch, the pattern of inter-ethnic relations—ranked versusunranked—affects the nature and the extent of ethnically basedgrievances that arise in a society. For those grievances to give riseto collective action, however, members of the aggrieved ethnic groupmust be mobilized for collective action. This requires that we accountfor the ways in which leaders emerge within ethnic groups and useshared ethnic identity to overcome free-rider tendencies among therank-and-file and mobilize them for ethnically based collectiveaction. Finally, I explore the conditions that determine whetherethnic collective action will assume violent forms. Violent conflictposes severe additional risks to participants in collective action. Assuch, it intensifies free-rider temptations. In order for a theory toexplain ethnic violence, I must specify the conditions under which arational individual will participate in such actions despite the risksposed by violent conflict. I will apply these principles in the analysisof two cases: the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils in SriLanka and the Hutu�Tutsi violence in Rwanda. The Sri Lankanconflict represents an example of ethnic violence in an unrankedsystem of ethnic stratification, where the eventual goal of the Tamilrebels was secession. Rwanda represents an example of ethnicviolence in a ranked system of ethnic stratification, where thegoal of the Tutsi rebels was the revolutionary overthrow of theHutu-dominated regime.

STRUCTURAL SOURCES OF ETHNIC CONFLICT: RANKEDVS. UNRANKED SYSTEMS

The structure of inter-ethnic relations—whether ethnic groups arearrayed in a ranked or unranked system of ethnic stratification—playsa significant role in determining the nature of the grievances aroundwhich ethnic mobilization can occur, the likelihood of successfulmobilization for collective action ever occurring, and the extent andforms that ethnic conflict will assume, should it erupt.

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Ranked Systems: Cultural Division of Labor

Vertically integrated or ranked systems of inter-ethnic relationshave been characterized by Michael Hechter and others as systemsof internal colonialism marked by a cultural division of labor. Thecultural division of labor refers to a pattern of structural discrimi-nation in which ‘individuals are assigned to specific types of occupa-tions and other social roles on the basis of observable cultural traitsor markers’.2 Social stratification is synonymous with ethnic identityin the sense that the social structure is characterized by one ethnicgroup being subordinate to the other. Once ensconced in power,the dominant group seeks to institutionalize its advantages by enact-ing policies that reinforce the existing stratification system, preservingfor its members a monopoly on high status roles and confining thesubordinate group to low status roles. This can be achieved by enact-ing discriminatory laws or by adopting policies that provide differ-ential access to status-confirming institutions, such as education,the military, the civil service, land ownership, or access to credit.3 Ineffect, ethnicity and class coincide in a ranked system of ethnic stra-tification.4 As a result, ethnic identity is reinforced and ethnicsolidarity is intensified because one’s ethnic identity cannot bedivorced from one’s economic status and political interests.5 Exam-ples of ranked systems would be South Africa under apartheidand the southern states of the United States prior to the civil rightsmovement.

The different ethnic groups in a ranked system typically areintermixed geographically so that interaction between members ofthe different groups is a routine feature of everyday social life.Indeed, such interaction is arguably necessary since the two groupsconstitute complementary segments of a single social and economicsystem. Interactions between the groups take on the character ofclientelist exchanges, with members of the subordinate groupreceiving subsistence guarantees from the dominant group inexchange for services, loyalty, deference, as well as a share of thegoods and services the subordinate group produces.6 As with anyclientelist system, the groups are interdependent, but the interdepen-dence is highly asymmetric, with members of the subordinate groupbeing far more dependent on the patronage of the dominant groupthan the latter is on the support and deference of any one memberof the subordinate group. Relations between groups are governedby clearly recognized norms of subordinate and superordinate status,with the behavioral norms governing inter-group interactions involv-ing ritualized modes of expressing the subordinate group’s deference

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and the superordinate group’s dominance. As such, inter-groupinteractions approximate the etiquette of a caste system.7

Social stability in a ranked system is preserved by the dominantgroup’s manipulation of access to subsistence goods and itsmonopoly over the coercive machinery of the state. The dominantgroup can manipulate subsistence guarantees in such a way as todeter members of the subordinate group from challenging the existingsystem of stratification. The dominant group also uses its coercivemonopoly to intimidate members of the subordinate group intorefraining from any organized challenge to the status quo. Whenchallenges do arise, the dominant group quickly represses them. Thus,ranked systems of ethnic stratification persist in many nations despitethe obvious and severe inequalities inherent in them: to challenge thesystem is to jeopardize one’s subsistence security and confront theoverwhelming coercive monopoly of the dominant group.

The economic and social changes that accompany modernizationand social development can disrupt the stability of a ranked systemand make it possible for challengers to arise from the subordinategroup. Industrialization, urbanization, the expansion of trade andcommerce all present subordinate groups with new opportunitiesfor economic security and advancement that are not controlled bythe dominant group. Those same changes often disrupt traditionalpatterns of clientelist exchange that had kept subordinate groupsdependent on the dominant group and therefore reluctant to chal-lenge the ranked system of stratification. Their new found autonomymakes members of the subordinate group less reluctant to challengethe inequities of the ranked system. New income flows give themmore resources to invest in ethnic collective action that challengesthe ranked order.

Unranked Systems: Competitive Ethnicity

The alternative to the ranked system is the unranked or horizon-tally integrated system of ethnic stratification. Where the culturaldivision of labor has broken down or never existed in the first place,a pattern of competitive ethnicity can emerge among ethnic groups.Groups find themselves in competition with each other, not just overeconomic resources but over control of the institutions of the state aswell, including the military, the chief executive office, and even civilservice positions. Unlike ranked systems, ethnic groups in unrankedsystems compete as relative equals, unrestrained by a cultural divisionof labor that would assign one group, on an ascriptive basis, anoverwhelming advantage over the others in this competition.

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One defining characteristic of an unranked system is that ethnicgroups are not intermixed geographically but instead live in relativelydistinct territorial enclaves. In such circumstances, each ethnic grouphas its own stratification system internal to the group and inde-pendent of all other ethnic groups in the nation. Within each ethnicgroup, there are opportunities for upward mobility, and the exploi-tation of these opportunities does not necessarily bring members ofthat group into conflict with other groups. Social status is notsynonymous with ethnicity in unranked systems. The different groupscoexist as parallel social hierarchies, with each group approximatingan incipient whole society. Indeed, in many cases unranked systemsare composed of groups that were formerly constituted as more orless autonomous whole societies.8 Accordingly, inter-group interac-tions are typically less frequent, less pervasive, and less essential toeach group’s well being, as compared to groups in a ranked system.Donald Horowitz goes so far as to characterize inter-group relationsin unranked systems as more nearly approximating internationalrelations than the clientelist dependency typical of ranked systems.9

Because the groups are relatively autonomous, an unranked systemcan achieve a certain equilibrium whereby competition betweengroups does not necessarily escalate into ethnic violence. As long asethnic competition is over the distribution of economic resources,opportunities, and benefit flows, ethnic competition need not escalateinto ethnic violence. While one group’s winning a round of the com-petition over benefits may preclude other groups from enjoying thosebenefits, it does not necessarily threaten the status hierarchy withinthose other groups or the opportunities for social mobility formembers of those groups within their own status hierarchy.

Rapid social changebroughtonbymodernization, industrialization,and=or decolonization can disrupt this equilibrium and intensifycompetition between unranked ethnic groups. Tensions often ariseover questions of the appropriate distribution of the new incomeflows and wealth-generating opportunities, or over the appropriatedistribution of political power in a newly created political regime.Control of the state itself can become the object of inter-ethnic com-petition, with each group seeking hegemony over its institutions.10

Each group fears that a rival group will gain control over the stateand use the power of its institutions to convert the unranked systeminto a ranked system. This fear can generate a security dilemma,whereby competing groups arm to preempt domination by othergroups but in so doing engender the fear among the other groupsthat they are arming to pursue their own hegemonic ambitions, or,more specifically, to install themselves as the dominant group in a

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ranked system of ethnic stratification.11 Under these circumstances,one group may launch a secessionist revolt in order to preventtheir subordination by the other group in a ranked system of ethnicstratification.

PATTERNS OF ETHNIC CONFLICT: RANKED VS.UNRANKED SYSTEMS

The likelihood of violent ethnic conflict as well as the form that itassumes � whether revolution, separatism, or communal violence �varies in part according to whether ethnic groups are arrayed in aranked or an unranked system of ethnic stratification. As with anyform of collective action, the outbreak of ethnic violence requires,first, that there be substantial grievances shared among the membersof at least one of the ethnic groups, and that these grievances beattributed to ethnic discrimination. The types of ethnic grievancesthat arise should vary depending upon whether the aggrievedgroup is embedded in a ranked or an unranked system of ethnicstratification.

Shared grievances by themselves are not sufficient for violentethnic conflict to occur. Individual members of an aggrieved ethnicgroup still have an incentive to free-ride because the benefits of ethniccollective action (violent or nonviolent) are public goods that eachmember of the aggrieved group will be able to enjoy regardless ofwhether or not she participated in the collective action. Hechterand Levi argue that ethnic mobilization efforts are more likely tosucceed when 1) the central state is relatively tolerant of dissidentcultural and political organizations, 2) an infrastructure of voluntarycommunal associations already exists, and 3) there are sufficientresources available to those associations to support organized politicalactivity.12 Ethnically based communal organizations are especiallycritical to overcoming free-rider tendencies for several reasons. First,they serve as mechanisms for dispensing selective incentives—privaterewards and punishments—to participants. They mobilize the ma-terial resources for private rewards, and they fulfill the monitoringfunction necessary to dispense punishments to those who try toevade participation. Second, the existence of effective communalorganizations raises people’s estimate of the probability that the col-lective action will succeed. Therefore, they become more willing toparticipate in the collective action because they have less fear thatparticipation will be an act of futility.13 For dissident leaders eth-nicity enhances their ability to mobilize participation in ethnic collec-tive action. First of all, it facilitates the identification of potential

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supporters, allowing leaders to target their recruitment efforts moreefficiently. Second, it facilitates the task of detecting and sanctioningfree-riders.14 In short, ethnicity reduces the cost of information forthe leadership in its efforts to overcome free-rider tendencies andmobilize group members for collective action.

Ethnic collective action need not be violent. Since the costs toindividual participants are greater in violent ethnic collective action,they are more likely to participate in nonviolent ethnic collectiveaction. Whether or not ethnic collective action takes on violent formswill depend in part on the response of the state and the other ethnicgroups to nonviolent collective action by the aggrieved ethnic group.If the response is violent repression of nonviolent collective action,then the repressed group may cease and desist from further collectiveaction, or some segment of its membership may shift their strategy toviolent collective action. The strategy that the state adopts in dealingwith ethnically based dissident challenges is likewise affected by theethnic component of the conflict. Just as ethnic divisions enhancethe ability of dissident leaders to identify and sanction free-riders,the state can also use ethnicity as a means of identifying actual,potential, or imagined enemies. When dissent is ethnically based,the tendency of state is to target repression according to ethniccriteria, so that one’s membership in the dissident ethnic group issufficient to make one a target for state repression, regardless of one’spast history of support or non-support of the dissident movement.The resulting calculus of fear will facilitate mobilization of non-elitesfor ethnic collective action because repression becomes a selectiveincentive that is distributed according to ethnic criteria and the onlyway to avoid it is to seek the protection of the dissident organization.

Conflict in Ranked Systems

Violent ethnic conflict in ranked systems is relatively rare becausethe dominant group’s monopoly of coercive resources makes the risksof challenging the status quo very costly for members of the subordi-nate group. Such risks are not undertaken lightly. The ability of thedominant group to manipulate the supply of subsistence insurancegives them the capacity to discourage subordinate group membersfrom actively supporting any effort to challenge the status quo, eventhough there is likely to be widespread latent support for such amovement among rank-and-file members of the subordinate group.Collective dissent by the subordinate group is also constrained bythe difficulty group members face in mobilizing their own coerciveresources to challenge the hegemony of the dominant group. The

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paternalistic pattern of inter-group interactions typical of rankedsystems makes it easy for the dominant group to monitor the activitiesof subordinate group members and to suppress grassroots organi-zations among them. Through their control over subsistenceresources and the coercive machinery of the state, the dominantgroup can usually preempt or at least deter any autonomous socialorganizations from arising among the subordinate group. At thevery least they can prevent those social organizations from becomingthe catalysts for dissident collective action that would threaten thestatus quo. Any efforts to instigate collective action are likely to bedetected by the dominant group and repressed quickly and severely.

Ethnic collective action in ranked systems is further impeded bythe difficulty subordinate groups face in developing the leadershipcadre capable of mobilizing members for collective action. The strin-gent ethnic criteria for social mobility in ranked systems all butpreclude the emergence of leaders from the subordinate group whohave the organizational skills and resources to build collective actionorganizations. Members of the subordinate group are usually deniedaccess to the educational or occupational opportunities that wouldallow them to acquire the knowledge, experience, and skills necessaryto become effective organizers. Moreover, members of the subordi-nate group typically lack the material resources to contribute tocollective action. The strict ethnic criteria that govern occupationalmobility in ranked systems relegate members of the subordinategroup to low income occupations. The dominant group monopolizescontrol over land, credit, jobs, and other sources of income andwealth. By manipulating access to these resources, the dominantgroup can compel the quiescence of the subordinate group by keepingthem so impoverished that they do not have the time or resources tocontribute to any dissident organizations that might emerge fromwithin their own ranks. Thus, despite the obvious and extremeinequities inherent in those systems, ranked systems of ethnic strati-fication have persisted in many nations precisely because there aresuch formidable obstacles to organizing dissident challenges fromwithin the subordinate group.

The one avenue for mobilizing dissident collective action isthrough the subordinate group’s existing network of communalorganizations. In a ranked system, the state, controlled by the domi-nant ethnic group, would prefer that any services needed by the sub-ordinate group be supplied through that group’s own localcommunal organizations rather than the state itself having to providethese same services out of its own resources. Thus, communal orga-nizations are often tolerated if not encouraged by the state in ranked

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systems, so long as they confine their activity to social services andnot to dissident activity. Should communal organizations expandtheir repertoire of activities to include dissident collective action,the state in a ranked system is more capable of suppressing thatactivity than is its counterpart in an unranked system.

For all of these reasons, ethnically based collective action,especially violent collective action, is less likely to emerge in rankedsystems than in unranked systems. However, when conflict does eruptin a ranked system, it is likely to be extremely violent. Indeed, ethnicviolence in ranked systems takes on the character of a social revol-ution because the only outcome that is worth the extreme risks thataccompany challenging the dominant group is the destruction ofthe rigidly hierarchical structure of inter-ethnic relations.15

Conflict in Unranked Systems

Conflict in unranked systems often emerges as a form of competi-tive ethnicity, whereby relatively autonomous ethnic groups competewith each other over control of the state and over new benefit flowsthat result from rapid development or modernization.16 Rapid socialchange of any sort alters the patterns of social organization and socialstratification within groups and the patterns of interaction betweengroups. Development also alters the distribution of political power,as the new groups that emerge to control new income flows gaininfluence in the political arena while existing groups whose impor-tance to the economy is eclipsed lose political power. In many casesrapid social change is also accompanied by profound structuralchange in the political system, through such processes as decoloniza-tion, military coups, democratization, or revolutionary regimechanges. When such changes occur in a system of unranked ethnicstratification, each group feels that it must compete or risk beingmarginalized in the redistribution of political power. Ethnic identityin unranked systems is reinforced by this competition becauseethnicity serves as a readily identifiable organizational basis forgroups to mobilize for collective action aimed at securing a greatershare of those benefits.

Because ethnic groups in unranked systems exist as relativelyautonomous whole societies, organizing group members for collectiveaction is not precluded in the same manner that it is in a rankedsystem. Groups in unranked systems typically live in territorialenclaves, and geographic concentration makes it easier for groupleaders to organize their constituents, free from interference, subver-sion, or intimidation by rival ethnic groups. Likewise, geographic

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concentration makes it more difficult for the state and rival ethnicgroups to monitor dissident political mobilization by a particularethnic group.

Second, the availability of opportunities for upward mobilitywithin the status hierarchy of each ethnic group makes it easier foreach group to cultivate its own cadre of leaders with the organiza-tional skills to mobilize members for collective action. Ambitiousand talented members of each group are not excluded from schoolsor jobs on the basis of ethnic criteria in the same way they wouldbe in a ranked system of ethnic stratification. Therefore, more ofthem will be able to develop their talents to the point that they canfulfill the role of political entrepreneur, organizing the members oftheir ethnic group for collective action. Because members of eachethnic group can aspire to the full range of occupational strata, thegroup as a whole is more likely to have enough income to supportethnic social organizations capable of mobilizing collective actionon behalf of the group.

Of necessity, the central state is more tolerant of ethnically basedcommunal organizations in an unranked system. Each ethnic grouphas its own autonomous social organizations to address the needsof its members. Compared to ranked systems, communal organiza-tions in unranked systems can expand into political activity withoutincurring the repressive wrath of the state or rival ethnic groups. Inan unranked system, no single ethnic group has the capacity to mono-polize the coercive capacity of the state without causing a crisis withinthe state and instigating resistance by other ethnic groups. Con-sequently, the state in unranked systems is less likely to repress dissi-dent organizations at the early stages of their development because itis less likely to have the capacity to do so. Should it try, it is morelikely to meet organized resistance from the ethnic group that is thetarget of its repressive measures.

Because mobilization is easier to accomplish in an unranked sys-tem than in a ranked system, ethnic conflict should be more frequentin unranked systems than in ranked systems. However, conflict inunranked systems is often over the distribution of tangible resourcesthat are readily divisible without necessitating changes in either thestatus hierarchy within groups or the structure of relations betweengroups. Unranked groups can compete over resources such as land,water rights, and even civil service positions without that competitionnecessarily escalating into armed conflict. The struggle over tangibleresources does not necessarily generate a security dilemma or threa-ten the cultural annihilation of one group by another. Thus, inunranked systems, conflict between groups can erupt, subside, and

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erupt again in a cyclical fashion, often without escalating to highlevels of protracted social revolution. And often the form of conflictthat occurs is communal conflict: direct conflict between ethniccommunities as opposed to conflict between an ethnic group andthe state.

The one issue that can drive conflict in an unranked system to thelevel of civil war is the fear that a rival ethnic group will gainhegemony over the institutional machinery of the state and use thatpower to reduce other ethnic groups to subordinate status. In short,groups in unranked systems fear the conversion of the system into aranked system, with them as the subordinate group. For the reasonscited above—namely, the greater capacity of unranked ethnic groupsto mobilize for collective action—ethnic groups in unranked systemshave some capacity to resist the drive for hegemony by a rival ethnicgroup, at least compared to subordinate groups in ranked systems.When the fear of hegemony within the existing nation state growsto become a real possibility, threatened ethnic groups will seek thesolution of separatism rather than social revolution, which is moretypical of a ranked system.17

The distinction between ranked and unranked systems of ethnicstratification can be illustrated by case studies that illustrate thedifferences in the dynamics of inter-ethnic politics in each type. Theconflict between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka illustrates howpolitics in an unranked system can escalate to secessionist conflict.Rwanda illustrates how ethnic conflict in a ranked system canescalate into revolutionary violence of genocidal proportions.

SRI LANKA: ETHNIC SEPARATISM IN AN UNRANKEDSYSTEM

Armed conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka hasbeen going on since the late 1970s. In July 1983, 13 Sinhalese soldierswere killed in an ambush by Tamil guerrillas. Sinhalese militants usedthis incident to incite widespread communal violence against Tamilsthroughout the island nation. Tamil militants responded by escalatingtheir level of violence to the point of full-fledged civil war. The govern-ment estimates that, since 1983, the war has resulted in 50,000 deathsand created an estimated 750,000 internal refugees.18 Most of thecasualties have been civilian non-combatants.19

Sri Lanka represents an example of violent ethnic conflict betweengroups that had coexisted in an unranked system of ethnic stratifi-cation. The conflict also illustrates how colonial policies can intensifyethnic identity within groups and exacerbate tensions between ethnic

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groups, thereby contributing to the outbreak of inter-ethnic conflictonce the nation gains independence.20 The Sri Lankan conflict alsoillustrates how changes in the structure of inter-ethnic relations—changes brought about by laws enacted by a democratically electedparliament—can generate resentment and fears among a minoritygroup when the rival ethnic group enjoys a permanent majority inthe parliament.

The Impact of British Colonial Rule

Despite stereotypes about dark-skinned Tamils and light-skinnedSinhalese, the two groups have a common origin and are not readilydistinguished from each other on the basis of physical characteristics.Indeed, prior to the colonial era intermarriage between the twogroups was not uncommon, nor was assimilation by members ofone group into the other.21 The basis for the distinction betweenTamils and Sinhalese was, rather, that Sinhalese are predominantlyBuddhist while Tamils are Hindu, and the two peoples speak differ-ent languages.

Sri Lankan Tamils make up about 12 per cent of the nation’spopulation. Approximately 80 per cent of them live in the northernpart of the island. A second group of Tamils, referred to as ‘IndianTamils’, constitute eight per cent of the population. They are descen-dants of migrants from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu whowere brought to the island by the British to serve as laborers on teaand rubber plantations. Muslims, descendants of traders who begansettling on the island in the tenth century, make up about seven percent of the population and are concentrated in the eastern coastalprovinces.22 The vast majority of the population (72 per cent) areSinhalese, who occupy the southern and western portions of theisland.

Pre-colonial Sri Lanka approximated an unranked system ofethnic stratification in the sense that Tamils and Sinhalese coexistedas two separate and relatively autonomous social systems. Indeed, thetwo communities existed as separate kingdoms that interacted witheach other more as a matter of international relations than inter-ethnic relations. They lived in separate regions of the island, withthe Tamils occupying the northern provinces around the Jaffnapeninsula and the Sinhalese kingdom being concentrated in the southand western coastal provinces. Despite differences in language andreligion, there was very little armed conflict between the two groups.

What changed this system of inter-ethnic relations was the adventof colonial rule. When the Europeans came to the island of Ceylon

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and began to colonize it, they had little interest in the Jaffna penin-sula because it is arid and not well-suited to any forms of agricultureother than subsistence cultivation. Colonial powers concentratedtheir efforts on developing large scale tea plantations in the morefertile southern regions of the island.23 The British subordinatedthe Sinhalese population of that region to serve as plantation labor,and they imported Tamils from the north to assist them in adminis-tering the colonial economy. Thus, as a consequence of British ‘divideand rule’ strategy, Tamils gained an advantage over the Sinhalese inaccess to British education. Their western education and mastery ofthe English language allowed Tamils to gain a disproportionate shareof the civil service positions in the colonial administration and a dis-proportionate presence in the commercial sector as merchants.24 TheTamil dominance of the civil service and commerce also meant thatthe Tamil population became diffused throughout the island. Theywere no longer concentrated exclusively in their traditional homelandin Jaffna. Soon they began to fill a disproportionate share of the posi-tions in local governments as well, even in villages and provinces thatwere predominantly Sinhalese.

Thus, economic status and ethnicity came to coincide more closelyas a consequence of British rule, and the two groups that had beenconcentrated in their own territorial enclaves became intermixed ina single ethnically stratified social system. British ‘divide and rule’policies had the effect of converting the pre-colonial unranked systemof stratification into a ranked system, with the Sinhalese majoritysubordinated to the Tamil minority in service to the British. Colonialpolicy reinforced ethnic identity among both Tamils and Sinhalese,exacerbating differences in language and religion by adding thenew criteria of economic and social status and mastery of English.Sinhalese resented the favored position that Tamils enjoyed underthe British administration. They believed that the Tamil advantagewas not the result of Tamil merit but of British policy.25

Independence and the Emergence of Ethnic Competition

With independence Ceylon adopted a British-style parliamentarysystem. The electoral rules allowed for multi-member districts withproportional representation, which made it possible for minorityinterests to gain representation in the parliament. However, the elec-toral system also created strong incentives for parties to polarizealong ethnic lines and for party leaders to base their appeal to voterson ethnic issues.

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The party system that first emerged after independence was led byparties advocating inter-ethnic cooperation. The United NationalParty (UNP), a predominantly Sinhalese party, and the Tamil Con-gress (TC) were the dominant actors in the new parliament. TheUNP and TC formed a weak coalition government that sought todownplay ethnic differences as Ceylon made the adjustment to inde-pendence. However, both parties soon faced challenges from withintheir own ethnic group by parties that were more rigidly ethno-nationalist and less supportive of cooperation across ethnic lines.The UNP was challenged by the populist Sri Lanka Freedom Party(SLFP), founded by UNP defectors disenchanted with what theysaw as the UNP’s failure to address Tamil dominance of the economyand civil service. The SLFP supported special status for Buddhismand the Sinhalese language and used religious appeals to lure Sinha-lese voters away from UNP. The TC split over the issue of IndianTamil citizenship, with the break-off faction of TC calling itself theFederal Party. Party fragmentation on both sides doomed the firstcoalition government and marked the last time that the Sinhaleseand Tamil parties worked together. Politics became increasinglypolarized along ethnic lines as parties that adopted more extremeethno-nationalist platforms managed to lure away ethnic voters fromthe more centrist UNP and TC. The centrist parties were then facedwith the choice of adhering to their moderate positions and losing asubstantial part of their ethnic base or meeting the competition fromwithin their own ethnic group by shifting to a more rigidly ethno-nationalist platform themselves.26 Because the UNP and the SLFPwere competing over the votes of such a large proportion of the totalelectorate, one or the other of these two parties was able to claim theright to form the government for the first 30 years after indepen-dence. No Tamil party was ever able to win more than seven per centof the vote or more than 17 seats out of the 166 in the Sri Lankanparliament.27

Once Sinhalese dominance of the parliament and its cabinet wasestablished, the SLFP launched a ‘Sinhalese only’ movement toappeal to the people on two critical cultural issues: religion andlanguage.28 By 1956, advocates of the ‘Sinhalese only’ movementcontrolled enough seats in parliament to enact legislation that madeSinhala the official language of the nation. In part, this move wasmotivated by a desire to diminish the advantage Tamils enjoyed byvirtue of their mastery of English. Besides its symbolic appeal tothe Sinhalese population, the ‘Sinhala only’ language legislationhad the effect of imposing a disadvantage on Tamils in the realmsof education and the civil service.29 ‘Language riots’ broke out in

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parts of the nation, and thousands of Tamils fled their homes in thesouth to Tamil regions in the north.30 Thus began the ‘gathering in’of the Tamil diaspora, a move that usually portends ethnic separat-ism in an unranked system of ethnic stratification.31

Another manifestation of Sinhalese resentment of Tamil successbecame apparent when the Sinhalese-dominated government intro-duced quotas for university admission. These quotas were designedto offset the advantage Tamils had enjoyed in university admissionbecause of their mastery of English and the advantages thataccrued to their over-representation in the civil service, professionsand commercial activities. The quota policy did succeed in gettingmore Sinhalese students into higher education, but their admissioncame at the expense of Tamil youth, some of whom became moreradicalized as a result. The Sinhalese-dominated parliament fol-lowed up by enacting discriminatory policies for hiring andpromotion in the civil service, the military, and the police. Thetop ranks of these institutions were quickly filled with SinhaleseBuddhists, further alienating the Tamil population. Sinhalese hiringquotas created special resentment among well-educated youngurban Tamils, the very segment of the Tamil population that couldproduce the sort of political entrepreneurs capable of mobilizingTamils for dissident collective action.32 For Tamil youth, theanswer to anti-Tamil legislation became separatism: the creationof a new independent state of Tamil Eelam centered in the Jaffnapeninsula.

Separatist sentiment was further reinforced by the government’sambitious Mahaweli Development Project, a program enacted inthe 1970s to expropriate land for irrigation and development projectsin the east. The program opened up 700,000 acres of land for agricul-ture, and 80,000 families, primarily Sinhalese, were relocated to theaffected region. Tamils (especially Indian Tamils) were excluded fromparticipation. To the Tamil population, this program looked less likean agricultural development project and more like a government ef-fort to colonize part of the Tamil homeland with Sinhalese.33

Although Sri Lankan Tamils constituted only about 13 per cent ofthe nation’s population, they made up 86 per cent of the populationin the northern provinces and 40 per cent of the eastern provinces.34

By resettling Sinhalese farmers in the eastern districts, the Colombogovernment threatened to dilute the Tamil majority in those districts,their strength in parliament and local governments, and their culturalautonomy as well. The resettlement program became one of themajor grievances that led to Tamil demands for a federal governmentand eventually independence.35

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In the 1977 elections, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF)ran on a platform of independence for a new Tamil Eelam state in theJaffna Peninsula. Although they again lost nationally, they inter-preted their overwhelming support in the northern and eastern pro-vinces as a plebiscite on the creation of the Tamil Eelam state.Accordingly, TULF declared autonomy from the government inColombo after the elections of 1977.36

Tamil Separatism

The elections of 1977 marked the culmination of ethnic hostilitiesthat had been escalating into sporadic violence during the 1970s.Disillusioned Tamil youths organized the Liberation Tigers of TamilEelam (LTTE) movement, which began a program of assassinations,robberies and bombings targeted against government officials, secur-ity forces, and other prominent Sinhalese targets. The Tamil Tigerswere labeled by the authorities as ‘terrorists’ and ‘guerrillas’ andthe government began a program of counterinsurgency intended tocrush the LTTE by force. However, government forces were notori-ously indiscriminate in the targeting of counterinsurgent violence,often torturing and killing Tamil villagers who had no demonstrablelinks to the Tigers. The government also did little or nothing to stopcommunal violence perpetrated by Sinhalese citizens against individ-ual Tamils and Tamil communities outside of the Jaffna peninsula.LTTE responded to communal violence with attacks of their own.

The cycle of violence countered by violence escalated throughoutthe early 1980s. In 1982 the Jaffna library, which was the center forTamil culture, was burned by the police. In the summer of 1983 theentire island witnessed a series of bloody riots directed against Tamilsand Tamil property. The riots were in retaliation for the killing of 13Sinhalese soldiers in a Tamil guerrilla ambush. That incident in turnwas seen by Tamils as revenge for the abduction and rape of severalyoung Tamil women by Sinhalese soldiers. Sinhalese violence againstTamils in the south left between 300 and 3,000 dead; over 200Tamil-owned factories and thousands of small shops were destroyedby rioters as well.37

From that point on, the conflict escalated to a full-fledgedseparatist war. The LTTE shifted from isolated attacks on individualsto battles with the military and attacks on police stations. Themilitary and police continued to target Tamil civilians and destroyTamil property, and the remainder of the Tamil population livingoutside of Jaffna fled to the north as refugees.38 In 1987 the SriLankan army launched an assault on the Jaffna peninsula to root

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out the Tamil guerrillas and their support base. The result was aseries of pitched battles with heavy casualties on both sides, includinglarge numbers of Tamil civilians. When the rebels finally foughtthe army to a standstill, the army’s response was to blockade thepeninsula and launch air strikes. Still, they could not subdue therebels. It was this failed offensive that motivated India to intervene.39

Indian Intervention in the Conflict

In July 1987, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi offered tomediate the Sri Lankan civil war. He presented a peace plan thatprovided for the largely Tamil-populated northern and easternprovinces to become a united region under one semi-autonomouselected council. The Sri Lankan government would also recognizethe Tamil language as an official language alongside Sinhalese. Inreturn, there would be a cease-fire, and the Sri Lankan army wouldwithdraw from the northern and eastern provinces. India pledgedto provide peacekeeping forces in the troubled areas of the northand deny Tamil guerrillas access to safe bases in the Indian provinceof Tamil Nadu. A few hours after the accord was signed the first6,000 Indian troops landed on Sri Lankan soil.40

The peace plan was not popular among either Sinhalese or Tamils.Many Sinhalese saw the accord as the first step toward the creationof an independent Tamil state. The new federal arrangement grantinglimited autonomy to the Tamils would be reinforced by Indiantroops. If the Tamil council took steps to declare independence,Indian troops would be in a position to prevent the government in

Colombo from stopping the march toward secession.41

Many Tamils were not pleased with the accord either because itmeant abandoning the goal of secession. They believed Tamils wouldnever achieve equity under any government dominated by a perma-nent Sinhalese majority. Peace on India’s terms meant laying downtheir arms and counting on Indian troops to prevent the army fromreneging on the agreement and attacking the Tamils once they weredisarmed.

By the summer of 1989, the number of Indian troops in Sri Lankahad increased to over 45,000. When Tamil Tigers in the South refusedto give up their arms voluntarily, Indian troops tried to disarm themby force. This resulted in armed conflict between LTTE and theIndian peacekeepers. Nor could the peacekeepers prevent Sinhaleseviolence against Tamil civilians. Eventually, an all-party peaceconference was convened in Colombo in 1989, at which both Tamil

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and Sinhalese representatives demanded that Indian troops bewithdrawn. With troop morale at a low point and casualties of over1,000, India was more than willing to comply, and its troops leftSri Lanka in 1990 having failed to enforce a peace settlement.

Explaining the Civil War in Sri Lanka

Tamils used the educational advantages they gained under Britishrule to secure a disproportionate share of positions in the civil serviceand the commercial economy. The opportunities afforded them bytheir educational advantages contributed to a diffusion of Tamilsfrom their homeland in the Jaffna peninsula to all regions ofSri Lanka, where they assumed high status roles in the civil service,local government, and the business community. Not surprisingly,the Sinhalese majority reacted with fears that Tamils would use theiradvantaged position to subordinate the Sinhalese in a ranked systemof ethnic stratification. Accordingly, the Sinhalese used their majoritystatus in parliament to enact legislation to reverse Tamil advantagesand preempt Tamil dominance in a ranked system of stratification.Increasingly, however, Tamils came to view these laws not as a resto-ration of equity between ethnic groups but as an effort on the part ofthe Sinhalese to subordinate the Tamil minority in a ranked system ofethnic stratification dominated by the Sinhalese majority. With bothgroups fearing subordination by the other, an ethnic securitydilemma emerged.

The escalation of Tamil opposition activity from nonviolentdissent to communal violence to separatist war also corresponds tochanges in the structure of inter-ethnic relations in Sri Lanka. WhenSinhalese violence against Tamils in the south and west escalated in1983, many Tamils left their homes and moved back to the Jaffnapeninsula. This is what Horowitz refers to as the ‘gathering in’ pro-cess, which typically precedes the shift to a secessionist strategy.42

For a Tamil to remain in the Sinhalese-dominated south and westwas to risk discrimination, persecution, loss of property, and evendeath. Weighing the risk of persecution without any hope for gainsif they stayed in the Sinhalese areas against the opportunities for ad-vancement and even independence that would come with the creationof the Tamil state, many Tamils chose the latter and migrated back toJaffna. The ‘gathering in’ of the 1970s and early 1980s also servedto return the nation’s structure of inter-ethnic relations to one morenearly resembling an unranked system of ethnic stratification, asthe two groups became increasingly isolated from each other inseparate territorial enclaves.

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If the groups in an unranked system are contending over control ofthe state, the conflict is likely to take the form of a revolution, withone group monopolizing control of the state and using that powerto subordinate the other group. If the group that does not controlthe state is, nevertheless, large enough and strong enough to chal-lenge the dominant group, conflict will take the form of revolution.If the group that is out of power is substantially smaller than thegroup that controls the government, such that a revolutionary victoryover a much larger majority is highly improbable, then the dissidentgroup is likely to seek independence through a separatist revoltinstead.

In Sri Lanka, the latter scenario appears to be the case. Sinhaleseenjoyed an overwhelming advantage over Tamils in terms of the sizeof their population (74% to 14%), and the Sinhalese had mono-polized control of the parliament, the prime ministership, and thecabinet ever since independence. By 1977, Tamil leaders had con-cluded that their status as a permanent minority would leave Tamilsvulnerable to the tyranny of an unchecked Sinhalese legislative ma-jority. When Tamil opposition to anti-Tamil legislation was met withrepression by the government and communal violence against Tamilcitizens, the Tamil leadership concluded that secession was the onlyviable alternative. The ‘gathering in’ of the 1970s and 1980s providedthe LTTE with a stronger, more secure territorial base from which tolaunch guerrilla attacks in support of secession.

The Sri Lankan conflict illustrates the difficulty inherent inreaching a peaceful settlement to an ethnically based civil war, espe-cially a secessionist revolt. Sri Lanka’s post-independence history isreplete with violent incidents that leaders of one group can framefor their followers as evidence that the rival group ultimately intendstheir subordination if not their annihilation (cultural or otherwise).Early on, Sinhalese leaders pointed to the over-representation ofTamils in high status positions as a threat to Sinhalese prosperity.Tamil leaders pointed to ‘Sinhala only’ legislation and resettlementprograms as Sinhalese efforts to subordinate Tamils and dilute ifnot suppress Tamil culture. Both groups can point to frequent out-breaks of communal violence � Sinhalese against Tamils and Tamilsagainst Sinhalese—as evidence that their rivals represent a physicalthreat. Persistent violence hardens inter-ethnic distrust, generatingthe sort of security dilemma that makes peaceful coexistence undera single government unacceptable to both.

Finally, the failure of peace efforts illustrates the struggles betweenmoderates and radicals within each group, and the role that violenceby radicals can play in undermining peace efforts. In 1995 peace talks

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opened between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE at theinitiative of newly elected President Chandrika BandaranaikeKumaratunga. When the government refused to agree to withdrawits forces from the north or to allow LTTE guerrillas to carry weap-ons when in government-controlled territories, the LTTE launched asurprise attack against government forces that resulted in, amongother things, the sinking of a quarter of the Sri Lankan navy whilethe ships were in port. The government responded with an offensiveof its own, but it failed to subdue the rebels.43 This cycle of peacetalks followed by offensives has marked the political terrain of SriLanka since at least the time of the India-brokered peace accordsof 1987.

The pattern that has emerged is one that is all too common inethnic civil wars. If moderates in the rebel faction and in the govern-ment initiate peace talks, hard-liners on one side or the other launchan attack. Attacks by rebel hard-liners make it difficult for moderatesin the government coalition to make concessions in the negotiations;attacks by government hard-liners make it difficult for moderates inthe rebel coalition to make concessions. Thus, in Sri Lanka whenTamil leaders signal a willingness to drop the demands for secessionand consider federal arrangements, radicals Tamils launch terroriststrikes against Sinhalese, who then bring pressure on Sinhaleseleaders to harden their stance in the peace talks. LTTE has evenattacked moderate Tamil groups in order to prevent their negotiatingwith the government. Conversely, when Sinhalese negotiators signal awillingness to concede some Tamil autonomy under federal arrange-ments, Sinhalese radicals launched attacks against Tamils with theintent of hardening Tamil commitment to nothing short of seces-sion.44 Compromise threatens leaders on both sides with a loss ofsupport among their own constituents. As long as negotiations forpeace can be undermined by violence, the prospects for a settlementto the civil war in Sri Lanka appear remote.

RWANDA: ETHNIC GENOCIDE IN A RANKED SYSTEM

On 6 April 1994, the government of Rwanda, dominated by ethnicHutu, unleashed a campaign of violence against the Tutsi minoritythat resulted in the bloodiest one hundred days of civil war in anyone nation since the end of the Second World War. At least750,000 people were killed in just a little more than three months.45

The slaughter subsided in July only after the Rwanda Patriotic Front(RPF), a guerrilla army of Tutsi exiles, defeated the Rwandan armyand drove the Hutu leadership into exile in neighboring Zaire.46

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About one million Rwandan Hutu fled into exile in Zaire with theHutu leadership.

The history of ethnic politics in Rwanda and the structure ofinter-ethnic relations in post-colonial Rwanda made ethnic revolutionrather than secession the goal of the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi.As with Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Rwanda’s experience withcolonial rule sharpened differences between the two ethnic groupsand set the stage for the conflict that eventually escalated into geno-cidal violence in 1994.

Pre-Colonial Rwanda

Prior to the colonial era, Rwanda was a kingdom, with a Tutsimonarch and a predominantly Tutsi court governing a majority Hutupopulation.47 There is much debate among scholars over how muchof the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu was racial and how muchof it was class-based and socially constructed. One school of thoughtargues that the markers that distinguished the two ethnic groups werein part physical. Tutsi, for instance, were noted for being very tall andthin with sharp angular facial features, while Hutu were on averageshorter and stockier in build with more rounded facial features.48

Others argue that centuries of cohabitation and intermarriage haveblurred such distinctions to the point that Rwandans are essentiallya single ethnic group. From this perspective, the distinction betweenHutu and Tutsi has been based more on socioeconomic status thanon physical traits, language, religion, culture or other indicators ofethnicity.49 This debate cannot be resolved here, nor need it be. Allthat matters for the analysis of ethnic conflict in Rwanda is that thosewho identified themselves as Hutu and those who identified as Tutsiboth recognized each other as distinct ethnic groups with a history(whether based in fact or myth) of conflict.

There is agreement about several aspects of the precolonialrelations between Hutu and Tutsi. First, by the time Rwanda wassubjugated as a colony at the end of the nineteenth century Hutuand Tutsi did share a common language and culture. Second, Hutuand Tutsi had lived intermixed with each other geographically; therewas no traditional Hutu homeland or Tutsi homeland. Third, prior tothe colonial era, intermarriage was not uncommon among Hutu andTutsi. Fourth, historically the two peoples had been divided more byclass and occupation than by geography. The more numerous Hutuwere farmers, while the Tutsi minority were herdsmen. As such, theyconstituted complementary parts of a single integrated social andeconomic system. Eventually, class distinctions did develop between

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an aristocratic class of Tutsi herdsmen and Hutu peasant farmers.But this divide was always quite permeable: Hutu who amassedenough wealth (as measured in cattle) could become Tutsi herdsmen,and Tutsi who lost their wealth and position would become Hutufarmers.50 In short, the cultural boundaries between Hutu and Tutsiwere always quite porous. Finally, contrary to the stereotype of dee-ply rooted ethnic hatred, there is no evidence of armed conflict be-tween Hutu and Tutsi prior to the colonial era. While Rwanda washardly a paradise of peace and prosperity, Hutu and Tutsi foughtalongside each other against neighboring kingdoms far more oftenthan they fought among themselves.

Rwanda Under Colonial Rule

When Rwanda was subjugated under colonial rule, first by theGermans and later by the Belgians, the colonial power chose to rulethe nation through the Tutsi monarchy and its network of chieftains.The relationship between the Tutsi monarch and his subjects changeddramatically, as the monarchy became ‘a conduit for the rule of thecolonizer, imposing taxes and obligatory cash crops to pay thesetaxes, implementing onerous legislation, including the infamousforced labor’.51 Rwandan peasants were obligated to provide theBelgian colonial authorities with as much as 120 days of labor peryear per adult. In addition, each farmer was required to plant 100 cof-fee bushes on his land and to sell their coffee to the Belgians at pricesset by the Belgians. Belgian-appointed Tutsi chieftains enforcedthese requirements.52 The chieftains were predominantly Tutsi, andin many cases they replaced Hutu chieftains in villages that werepredominantly Hutu. By the time the Belgians departed in 1959, 43of the 45 chiefs in Rwanda were Tutsi, as were 549 of the 559sub-chiefs.53 By conferring decided advantages on Tutsi, often atthe expense of Hutu, the Belgian colonial administration sharpenedthe ethnic divide between the two groups. The Belgians found itadvantageous to their interests to reinforce the distinction betweenTutsi and Hutu because it gave the Tutsi minority an incentive tocollaborate with the colonial authorities. The Belgians instituted asystem of population registration that recorded each citizen’s ethnicaffiliation at birth. This had the effect of reducing the permeabilityof boundaries between Hutu and Tutsi and transforming what hadbeen, in effect, a class distinction into a more rigid ethnic divisionbetween groups. The registration system continued after indepen-dence. Indeed, it provided the means by which Hutu militiasidentified victims in the genocidal violence of 1994.54

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Independence and Hutu Dominance

When Rwanda gained independence in 1959, Hutu and Tutsi werealready arrayed in a ranked system of ethnic stratification, with theHutu majority relegated to lower status occupations in the agricul-tural sector of the economy and the Tutsi minority enjoying positionsof greater wealth and controlling most positions of political power,both locally and nationally. With independence, the Hutu leadershiptook up the call for democracy, seeing it as an opportunity to reversethe system of ethnic stratification.55 The Hutu were by far the nu-merical majority in the nation. Many had prospered during the lastyears of Belgian rule, when the Second World War had generated de-mand for the crops Hutu farmers could produce. The Tutsi-led inde-pendence movement was itself based on ideological principles ofracial equality (between Africans and Europeans) and democracy.The Hutu leadership used these same principles to assert their claimsto majority rule in what they termed the ‘social revolution’ thatwould accompany independence.

Belgium finally granted independence to Rwanda in 1959, and aparliamentary system of government was adopted. When the firstlegislative elections were held in 1960�61, the virulently anti-TutsiParmehutu party won a substantial victory which they used to enactlegislation replacing the Tutsi-dominated monarchy with a Hutu-dominated presidential system.56 The new Hutu-dominated govern-ment began displacing the Tutsi from positions of power andauthority in the national and local governments, replacing them withHutu. Many Tutsi (especially their leaders) went into exile. Between1961 and 1963 Tutsi exiles made sporadic attempts to return bylaunching guerrilla incursions from Burundi and Uganda. Theseattacks were easily repulsed, but they did incite an unprecedentedwave of Hutu violence against Tutsi civilians that left as many as30,000 dead and sent another 100,000 into exile as refugees.57 TheTutsi who remained in Rwanda were mainly peasants, like their Hutuneighbors. Those who had been prosperous land-owners, cattleowners, business people, or civil servants were either killed orexiled.58

Thus, the ranked system of ethnic stratification was inverted withindependence. The formerly dominant Tutsi were killed or driveninto exile, and the Hutu majority asserted its dominance in the newpresidential government. However, independent Rwanda’s newgovernment was far from democratic. For most Rwandan Hutu, thatfact was not a major source of grievance. At least independence hadfreed them from the Belgians and the aristocratic dominance of Tutsi

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chieftains.59 The authoritarian government of President Kayibandatolerated no challenge to its authority, imprisoning, killing, or exilingmost of its Tutsi predecessors in power as well as a number of Hutuopposition politicians.60

In 1973 President Kayibanda was driven from power in a coup ledby General Juvenal Habyarimana. Under Habyarimana, the remain-ing Tutsi in Rwanda were all but excluded from any positions ofpower, authority, or economic influence. There was not a single Tutsiin charge of a local government. There was only one Tutsi officer inthe army. Only two members of 70-person parliament and oneminister of the 25�30 member cabinet were Tutsi. Tutsi admissionsto schools and universities were restricted by a quota system, aswas their employment in the civil service.61 Consequently, Tutsibegan gravitating to the private sector, where they were less subjectto institutional discrimination and their advantages in educationand experience at interacting with Europeans in business situationsgave them an advantage.

The Habyarimana regime proved to be no more democratic thanits predecessor. Habyarimana outlawed all parties except his ownMouvement Revolutionnaire National pour le Developpment(MRND, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development)on the grounds that competitive parties reinforced ethnic, regionaland other divisions within society. MRND was to be the mass partythat united the entire nation and conferred on Hutu and Tutsi alike anew national identity as Rwandans. Membership in MRND wasmandatory for every Rwandan citizen, and the party monopolizedthe selection of all local officials.62 Life for Rwandan peasants,whether Hutu or Tutsi, was no better under the new regime either.Habyarimana reinstituted the system of corvee labor in 1975, withimprisonment as the penalty for refusing to comply.63 Peasants—both Hutu and Tutsi—were required to grow a certain amount ofcoffee on their lands and sell the coffee to the state at a price dictatedby the state.

The Spiral into Ethnic Violence

Although ethnic conflict had plagued Rwanda since independence,the question one must ask is what would cause this tension to escalateto the point that genocidal violence on the scale witnessed in 1994would be the outcome. Most analysts point to three factors that con-verged to fuel the fires of inter-ethnic hatred to a level unseen even inRwanda’s bloody post-independence history.

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First, the collapse in world market prices for coffee precipitated asevere economic crisis in 1985, and the Habyarimana regime provedincapable or unwilling to take steps to resolve it. Export earningsfrom coffee in 1993 were only 20�25 per cent of what they had beenin 1985. GDP per capita decreased from $355 in 1983 to $260 in1990.64 Large numbers of Rwandans were reduced to spending almostall of their income just on food. At one point, peasant coffee growersuprooted 300,000 coffee bushes in order to plant subsistence crops.65

In response, the Habyarimana regime was compelled by internationalfinancial institutions to undertake an austerity program that simplymade things worse for the average Rwandan.

Second, what eventually weakened the Habyarimana regime wasthe increasing international pressure for Rwanda to democratize.With the end of the Cold War, western powers suddenly became lesstolerant of authoritarian regimes whose sole virtue was that theyloudly proclaimed their anti-communism. The Habyarimana regimecame under increasing pressure internationally and domestically toabandon its one-party system and introduce democratic reforms asa precondition to receiving international economic aid. In 1991,Habyarimana acceded to multi-party elections. Four new partiesformed to constitute an opposition to the MRND, and they were in-corporated into a coalition government. However, the MRND’spatronage network gave them a decided advantage in any election,and MRND remained dominant in the Rwandan government.66

Third, the civil war erupted in 1990, as exiled Tutsi troops, battlehardened from having fought alongside Yoweri Museveni in his suc-cessful effort to overthrow the government of Milton Obote inUganda, crossed the border into Rwanda to overthrow the Habyari-mana government. Although the RPF’s initial assault was stopped bythe Rwandan army, the RPF did manage to retain enough of a terri-torial base inside Rwanda to sustain a low-intensity guerrilla waragainst the regime. The death toll from the civil war slowly mounted,and the number of people displaced by the war reached 900,000 by1993.67 When the RPF attacked, the Habyarimana regime retaliatednot just against RPF forces on the battlefield; they also instigateddeath squad killings of Tutsi civilians.

This resort to indiscriminate repression had the effect of drivinglarge numbers of otherwise uninvolved Tutsi into the support baseof the RPF. Whereas the RPF began its invasion in 1990 with about4,000 men, by the time they seized Kigali in 1994, they had some20,000 combatants in their ranks.68 Nor did Habyarimana confinehis repression exclusively to Tutsi. He began to equate oppositionto his regime on any issue to collaboration with the RPF and betrayal

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of Hutu solidarity.69 Thus, he turned on Hutu opposition parties,especially those based in the south who had long resented his tend-ency to funnel development projects and government funding to hisallies in the north.

The Failed Peace Process

With the RPF threatening to widen the civil war, Habyarimanawas under pressure from both the international community andopposition parties within Rwanda to enter peace talks with theRPF.70 Thus began the Arusha peace process. The Arusha plan thatwas eventually agreed upon provided, first, for a cease-fire betweenthe RPF and the government of Rwanda. The truce allowed theRPF to continue to occupy the territory it controlled inside Rwandaat the time the cease-fire went into effect. Against the wishes of theRwandan government, the accords also provided for the repatriationand resettlement of Tutsi refugees. As for the new governmentcreated by the settlement, the RPF and the MRND would eachreceive five seats on the 21-member council of ministers, with theremaining 11 seats being divided between the other oppositionparties. The prime minister and foreign minister would be filled bythe minor parties, with MRND having the defense ministry andRPF the interior ministry. A critical element of the peace accordwas the merging of the two military forces: military commandpositions would be divided equally between MRND and RPF, withthe MRND gaining only a 60:40 advantage in total troop numbers.71

Not surprisingly, the Arusha accords were not popular amongHabyarimana’s own party or the Rwandan military. The provisionsconcerning the integration of the RPF with the Rwandan army wereespecially offensive to the Presidential Guard, the Hutu death squads,and much of the MRND.72 While returning from a round of negotia-tions in Dar-es-Salaam on 6 April 1994, Habyarimana’s airplane wasshot down, more than likely by disgruntled members of the Rwandanmilitary. The hard-liners in the MRND assumed the role of spoilersin the peace process by killing their own leader when he made conces-sions that they considered unacceptable. They then blamed his deathon the Tutsi and used this charge to mobilize Hutu civilians for re-newed attacks on the Tutsi civilians and on Hutu supporters of theopposition parties that favored the Arusha accords. Thus began theslaughter that reached genocidal proportions in the Spring of 1994.As many as 50,000 Hutu soldiers, militia, and ordinary Hutu pea-sants, armed with rifles, grenades, and machetes, began house-to-house searches for Tutsi and ‘Tutsi sympathizers’. Gerard Prunier

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argues that the slaughter was organized, systematic and orchestratedby top officials in the national government, local governments, andthe army. He estimates the final death toll at 800�850,000 withanother 300,000 fleeing the country as refugees.73

Peter Uvin raises the question of why and how Hutu leaders wereable to mobilize their followers for such a brutal assault as late as1994.74 By that time, there were no Rwandans left who had experi-enced pre-colonial Tutsi rule. Eighty per cent of the population in1994 had been born after independence and therefore had never evenexperienced Tutsi rule as agents of the Belgian colonial administra-tion. The Tutsi had no political parties of their own. They were sys-tematically excluded from any positions of influence in government.Most of them had been stripped of their land. Indeed, most Tutsiwere peasant farmers, living in the same villages as Hutu, attendingthe same churches, and earning roughly the same income as theirHutu neighbors. For 30 years they had been relegated to subordinatestatus in a Hutu-dominated system of ethnic stratification. How,then, were Hutu leaders able to convince Hutu peasants that theseTutsi represented a threat to them, a threat that had to be eradicatedby genocidal violence?

Part of the answer is that the ethnic dividing lines between Hutuand Tutsi had been drawn rather starkly by the colonial administra-tion. The Belgians had used the Tutsi to control the Hutu, and in sodoing had reinforced a deep-seated hatred of Tutsi on the part ofHutu and a mutual distrust between the two groups. As David Smithput it,

The Hutu, while functioning as a class of exploited peasants, were theobject of ethnocentric as well as aristocratic disdain, despised not onlyas subaltern laborers but as presumed racial inferiors. And they cameto regard themselves as an oppressed race, so that, when they arose inrevolt against Tutsi rule in the early 1960s, they were moved as muchby sentiments of ethnic pride as by class consciousness. In a sense,Rwandan class and ethnicity had merged.75

After independence, Hutu leaders found it useful for their ownpurposes to sustain the ethnic divide with a persistent ideology ofracial hatred. This justified their authoritarian control over politicaland economic power and gave them a convenient scapegoat towardwhich they could divert popular unrest when their own predatorymanagement of the Rwandan economy resulted in periodic macroeco-nomic downturns and hardship for Hutu farmers. Occasional foraysby Tutsi exiles allowed the government to fan the flames of Hutufears. When thousands of Hutu were slaughtered by Tutsi in

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neighboring Burundi in 1965 and 1972, Rwanda’s government usedthose incidents to reinforce their anti-Tutsi ideology at home.

What brought the killing to an end finally was the military victoryof the Tutsi RPF guerrillas. They restarted their offensive soonafter President Habyarimana’s death. On 11 April, they had reachedthe capital of Kigali. By 19 July, a new government was sworn inKigali, the result of the RPF’s military victory. The remainder ofHabyarimana’s government and the leaders of the Hutu army andmilitias fled to exile in Zaire.

CONCLUSION

The structure of inter-ethnic relations—i.e., whether ethnic groupsare arrayed in a ranked or an unranked system of ethnic stratifi-cation—helps us account for how ethnic conflict arises and the formsthat it takes. First, the presence of ethnic divisions helps us explainthe grievances that give rise to dissident collective action. When so-ciety is divided along ethnic lines, it is almost inevitable that the fruitsof development and economic growth—including income flows, newopportunities in the economy, and positions of power in the govern-ment—will be distributed unequally between ethnic groups. Onegroup will enjoy an advantage over others in the competition forthese benefits. Ethnicity also helps us account for how dissidentleaders can mobilize followers to participate in or otherwise supportdissident collective action. Ethnic identity becomes a basis forframing the issues and persuading non-elites to support the dissidentmovement. Ethnic identity also facilitates the leaders’ tasks of distin-guishing potential supporters from those who are unlikely to supportthe movement. In addition, ethnic markers facilitate the task ofmonitoring and sanctioning free-riders.

Differences in the pattern of ethnic stratification—ranked versusunranked—allow us to account for some of the differences we witnessin the likelihood of ethnic collective action emerging and the formthat such activity will take: revolution versus separatism. Comparedto unranked systems, ethnic collective action is more difficult tomobilize in ranked systems because the subordinate group is less ableto generate the leaders needed to mobilize the movement and theresources necessary to sustain it. When subordinate groups in rankedsystems do rise up, however, their movement is more likely to assumethe form of an ethnic revolution than a separatist revolt. From thetwo cases examined state repression plays a critical role in the escala-tion of ethnic collective action to violent ethnic revolt. Once theconflict escalates to that point, whether it takes the form of an ethnic

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revolution (as in Rwanda) or an ethnic secessionist war (as inSri Lanka) is again a function of the patterns of ethnic stratificationin society.

NOTES

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Inter-national Studies Association, (Chicago, 21�25 Feb. 2001).

1. See, for instance, Robert T. Blanton, T. David Mason and Brian Athow, ‘Col-onial Style and Post-Colonial Ethnic Conflict in Africa’, Journal of PeaceResearch 38 (2001) pp.473�89; see also T. David Mason, Joseph P. Weingartenand Ronnie Lindstrom, ‘Structure versus Grievance as Determinants of EthnicCivil War’ (unpublished manuscript); T. David Mason and Joseph P. Weingar-ten, ‘Regional Differences in Third World Ethnic Conflict, 1980�1990: Struc-tural versus Grievance-based Explanations’, Presented at the 2000 AnnualMeeting of the American Political Science Association (Washington DC).

2. Michael Hechter, ‘The Political Economy of Ethnic Change’, American Journalof Sociology 79 (1974) p. 1151.

3. Michael Hechter, ‘Towards a Theory of Ethnic Change’, Politics and Society 2(Fall 1971) p.42.

4. Donald L. Horowitz, ‘Three Dimensions of Ethnic Politics’,World Politics 23(1971) pp.232; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1985) pp.23�5.

5. Eric M. Leifer, ‘Competing Models of Political Mobilization: the Role of Eth-nic Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 87 (1981) pp.26; Anthony H. Birch,‘Minority Nationalist Movements and Theories of Political Integration’, WorldPolitics 30 (1978) pp.326�7.

6. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups (note 4) p.26.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., p.24.

9. Horowitz, ‘Three Dimensions’ (note 4) p.234.

10. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, ‘Containing Fear: The Origins and Man-agement of Ethnic Conflict’, International Security 21 (Fall 1996) pp.43�5.

11. Stuart J. Kaufman, ‘Spiraling to Ethnic War: Elites, Masses and Moscow inMoldova’s Civil War’, International Security 21 (1996) pp.108�38.

12. Michael Hechter, and Margaret Levi, ‘The Comparative Analysis of Ethnoregio-nal Movements’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1979) pp.260�74.

13. Michael Hechter, D. Friedman and M. Appelbaum, ‘A Theory of Ethnic Collec-tive Action’, International Migration Review 16 (1982) pp.412�34.

14. Ibid., p.424.15. Horowitz, ‘Three Dimensions’ (note 4) p.234.16. Susan Olzak, ‘Contemporary Ethnic Mobilization’, Annual Review of Socio-

logy 9 (1983) pp.355�74; Susan Olzak, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

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17. Horowitz, ‘Three Dimensions’ (note 4) p.235.18. Nilan Fernando, ‘Sri Lanka in 1997: Inching Toward a Durable Peace’, Asian

Survey 38 (1998) pp.142�7.19. Kenneth Bush, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka’, Conflict Quarterly 10 (1990)

pp.41�58.20. See Blanton, Mason and Athow (note 1).21. Patrick Peebles, ‘Colonialization and Ethnic Conflict in the Dry Zone of Sri

Lanka’, Journal of Asian Studies 49 (Feb. 1990) pp.30�55.22. Bush (note 19) p.45.23. Peebles (note 21).24. Bush (note 19) pp.48�9.25. Ibid., p.49.26. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups (note 4) pp.355�7.27. Pauletta Otis and Christopher Carr, ‘Sri Lanka and the Ethnic Challenge’

Conflict 8 (1988) p.208.28. Robert N. Kearney, ‘Sri Lanka in 1985: The Persistence of Conflict’, Asian

Survey 26 (Feb. 1986) pp.219�23.29. Otis and Carr (note 27) pp.203�16.30. Bush (note 19) p.50.31. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups (note 4).32. Amita Shastri, ‘The Material Basis for Separatism: The Tamil Elam Movement

in Sri Lanka’, The Journal of Asian Studies 49 (Feb. 1990) pp.56�77.33. Otis and Carr (note 29) p.207.34. Gamini Samaranayake, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Prospects of Manage-

ment: An Empirical Inquiry’, Terrorism and Political Violence 3 (1991)pp.75�87.

35. Shastri (note 32).36. Otis and Carr (note 29) p.211.37. Jonathan Spencer, ‘Collective Violence and Everyday Practice in Sri Lanka’,

Modern Asian Studies 24 (July 1990) p.603; Jayantha Perera, ‘Political Develop-ment and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka’, Journal of Refugee Studies 5 (1992)p.146.

38. Kearney (note 28) p.112.39. Dennis Austin, Democracy and Violence in India and Sri Lanka (New York:

Council on Foreign Relations, 1995).40. Kumar Rupesinghe, ‘Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia: The Case of Sri Lanka and

the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF)’, Journal of Peace Research 25 (1988)pp.346�9; Shantha K. Hennayake, ‘The Peace Accord and the Tamils in SriLanka’, Asian Survey 29 (April 1989) pp.407�10.

41. Bruce Matthews, ‘Seeds of the Accord’, Asian Survey 24 (Feb. 1989) pp.229�34.42. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups (note 4).43. Marshall R. Singer, ‘Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict: Have Bombs Shattered Hopes

for Peace?’ Asian Survey 36 (Nov. 1996) pp.1146�55.44. Bryan Pfaffenberger, ‘Sri Lanka in 1987: Indian Intervention and Resurgence of

the JVP’, Asian Survey 28 (Feb. 1988) pp.138�9.

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45. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omaar, ‘The Genocide in Rwanda and the Inter-national Response’, Current History 94 (April 1995) p.156.

46. Human Rights Watch, Slaughter Among Neighbors: The Political Origins ofCommunal Violence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995) p.13.

47. David Norman Smith, ‘The Genesis of Genocide in Rwanda: The Fatal Dialecticof Class and Ethnicity’, Humanity and Society 19 (1995) p.60; Peter Uvin, ‘Preju-dice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda’, African Studies Review 40 (1997)pp.92�3.

48. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (NY: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1995) p.5.

49. Christopher Clapham, ‘Rwanda: Perils of Peacemaking’, Journal of PeaceResearch 35 (1998) p.197.

50. Human Rights Watch (note 46) p.14.51. Uvin (note 47) p.95.52. Smith (note 47) p.66.53. Prunier (note 48) p.27.54. Human Rights Watch (note 46) p.14.55. Uvin (note 47) p.96.56. Ibid.57. Ibid.58. Smith (note 47) p.62.59. Prunier (note 48) p.60.60. Uvin (note 47) p.98.61. Prunier (note 48) p.100�101.62. Ibid., p.76.63. Smith (note 47) p.6764. Uvin (note 47) p.106.65. Smith (note 47) p.68.66. Clapham (note 49) p.200.67. Uvin (note 47) p.109.68. Rene LeMarchand, ‘Managing Transition Anarchies: Rwanda, Burundi, and

South Africa in Comparative Perspective’, Journal of Modern African Studies32 (1994) p.596.

69. Clapham (note 49) p.200.70. Ibid., p.201.71. Ibid., pp.202�3.72. LeMarchand (note 68) p.597.73. Prunier (note 48) p.239�48, 265.74. Uvin (note 47) p.102�5.75. Smith (note 47) p.60.

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