Ethnic, Racial, and Nationalist Social Movements

(forthcoming in James D. Wright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.)

Author Information:
Susan Olzak
Professor of Sociology
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305-2047
olzak@stanford.edu
Telephone: 01-650-723-3830
FAX: 01-650-725-6471

Keywords: Ethnic and Racial Social Movements; Ethnic Nationalism; Nation- and State-Building;
Race and Ethnic Politics; Social Movements; Ethnic Competition, Ethnic Identity; Ethnic Solidarity
and Mobilization; Globalization; and Pan-ethnic Social Movements.

Cross-References: Collective Behavior, Sociology of; Civil Rights Movement; Ethnicity, Sociology
of; Nationalism, Sociology of; Political Sociology; Racial Relations.
Abstract
Ethnic, racial, and nationalist social movements organize around distinct ethnic identities, but they differ
with respect to the scope of their claims, activities, and goals. Ethnic nationalist movements can be
distinguished empirically from ethnic/racial movements by the presence of demands claiming legitimate
rights to sovereignty and/or authority to administer a specific territory. As a result, nationalist movements
are likely to come into conflict with existing state authorities and the international system. Theories
explaining the rise, persistence, and decline of these movements vary with respect their emphasis on
cognitive, rational, or instrumentalist motivations for such movements, and to the degree these
movements come in conflict with state authorities.

Introduction and Definitions

Though they are commonly analyzed separately, ethnic, racial, and nationalist (hereafter E/R/N)
movements voice strikingly similar claims of sovereignty rights and ethnic integrity. Race is
conventionally defined in terms of putative biological or inherited features, while ethnicity tends to refer
to cultural and acquired traits such as language, religion, and custom. Various combinations of claims,
goals, tactics, and organizational forms distinguish different types of E/R/N movements. This section first
establishes some working definitions for ethnic and nationalist social movements, lists various forms of
E/R/N movements, and then briefly reviews several relevant research traditions.

Social movements generate collective action advocating fundamental changes in the political or economic
arrangements in a society. Social movements typically involve sustained activity over time and place
(whereas collective action may be fleeting). Most scholars also find that adherents of a social movement
tend to support a coherent ideology that defines its core identity.

The defining features of ethnic and racial social movements (E/R) are that claims are made based upon
particular identity or boundary, defined by the presence of racial or ethnic markers (Barth 1969). These
markers typically include skin pigmentation, ancestry, language, and a history of discrimination,
conquest, or other shared experience. Recent research tends to subsume racial and ethnic movements
under the label of ethnicity. This is due to the fact that distinct biological characteristics do not easily
allow observers to distinguish among categories that are fluid, fuzzy, and permeable. For simplicity (and
to avoid invoking unscientific assumptions about the genetic basis of race), most researchers prefer the
more generic label of ethnicity (Brubaker 2004).

Successful challenges from E/R/N movements depend upon levels of group solidarity and mobilization
capacity. In order to examine the effect of these factors on movement outcomes, it is necessary to
distinguish a movement’s mobilization capacity apart from ethnic solidarity. Solidarity is characterized as
the conscious identification (and loyalty) with a particular race or ethnic population, measured by
attitudes, institutional involvement (or organizational participation), and monitoring capacity.
Mobilization is the capacity to harness resources (including solidarity, organizations, and material
resources) in an effort to reach some collective goal. The U.S. civil rights movement is a prototypical E/R
social movement. As a template for collective action, the civil rights movement generated many
subsequent movements (and counter-movements), including the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa,
rights-movements for Muslims in Western Europe, and many other settings (Andrews 2013).

While race and ethnic movements make reference to a shared identity based upon cultural markers,
phenotype, outward expressions of loyalty, celebrations, violation of minority rights, or in- and out-group
labels, nationalism is a social movement making a territorial claim. According to Hechter (2000),

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nationalist movements articulate claims for self-determination and authority over a specified territory and
espouse grievances based upon the fact that these demands are not now being satisfied. Ethnic
nationalism also includes references to shared ethnic identity as a basis for these demands.

The pursuit of sovereignty rights typically also provokes conflict (and perhaps also warfare) with existing
regimes. Such conflict can remain quiescent for long periods of time, erupting suddenly into full-blown
armed guerrilla warfare, or civil war, depending on regime strength, outside support, primary export
commodities, internal mobilization of resources, and reaction by state authorities to nationalist
movements (Fearon and Laitin 2003, 2005).

However, nationalist movements do not always organize around race or ethnic identity. Instead, they may
rest upon a group’s geographical concentration, political jurisdiction and leadership, and/or legacy claims
to legitimate authority. Some scholars refer to this as “civic nationalism,” in which national identity cross-
cuts ethnic identities. Civic nationalism is often characterized as more inclusive, as in multiculturalism
(but see Brubaker 2004).

Brubaker (1996: 6–12) categorizes nationalism as one of three types of collective action mobilized by
national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands. This tripartite definition has the
advantage of analyzing nationalism as a confrontation with an existing regime, empire, colonial power, or
host nation. Put differently, ethnicity becomes transformed into nationalism when it makes specific
historical claims and attempts to administer the group as a political community.

Social movement perspectives add the insight that E/R/N movements can be further distinguished by their
relative duration, target, tactics, violence, and audience. These distinctions yield eight broad categories:
(1) autonomy movements that demand special rights over a particular territory; (2) civil rights protests
that demand expansion of a group’s civil and economic rights or demand an end to discrimination; (3)
antagonist movements directed against specific ethnic targets, including collective attacks ranging from
genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mob violence, to symbolic threats; (4) state-strengthening nationalism,
which attempts to unify diverse cultures (state-building nationalism) or merge politically divided
territories into one state (unification nationalism); (5) secession movements claiming rights of withdrawal
from formal state authority (to join or form a newly independent state); (6) separatist movements demand
their own state authority which involves replacing existing state authority and administrative powers; (7)
irredentist movements are those that claim rights over a territory currently administered by another state
authority, and (8) genocide or ethnic cleansing, which is an extreme form of violent social movements
against a target population which aims to either annihilate or remove an entire population.

While these definitions clarify some important distinctions, the application of these terms often becomes
tricky when conducting research on E/R/N movements because race and ethnic boundaries are porous,
dynamic, and flexible. From different political vantage points and at different times, the same movement
may be seen as engaging in senseless violence or as a nationalist liberation movement. Moreover,
movements adopt new goals and tactics to adjust to shits in the political environment. Such changes by
movements may engender fears that a movement’s original authenticity has become compromised or
coopted. While these transformative qualities of social movements undoubtedly create difficulties for
researchers, there is a hidden advantage as well. Taking these shifts into account might reveal new
information about how group identity becomes transformed into social movements.

Core Research Questions

Questions about the origins, persistence, and success of movements drive the majority of all social
science research efforts in this area. First, how does ethnic, racial, religious, territorial or national identity

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become transformed into active social movements? This question underscores the importance of
maintaining a distinction between cultural or symbolic expressions of identity (e.g., ethnic self-help
organizations, immigrant festivals, head scarves) from social movements that express claims for expanded
rights to some set of authorities, or violence directed against specific groups. Accordingly, scholars ask
under what conditions will specific boundaries (e.g. language vs. skin pigmentation) come to be
politically activated. In other words, it is important to frame the salience of ethnicity in social movements
as something to be explained.

Second, are the factors explaining the emergence the same as those that encourage the persistence of
E/R/N movements? Until recently, social scientists have focused mainly on the internal characteristics of
states to explain E/R/N movements. Thus poverty, rough terrain, imposition of direct rule, warlord
corruption, or some other structural feature of the political system or economy triggers have been
identified as factors raising levels of insurgency (Fearon and Laitin 2003). Others have drawn attention to
the advantages of viewing social movements as a function of global and transnational mechanisms that
encourage ethnic insurgency (Olzak 2006, 2011). Still others emphasize the importance of the existence
of ethnic grievances driven by ethnic exclusionary practices directed against less powerful minorities
(Esteban, Mayoral, and Ray 2012; Wimmer 2002).

A third question asks, are ethnic movements truly novel, or are they are simply political movements that
once, earlier in history, adopted other forms? Without undertaking a long historical perspective,
answering this question is difficult. However, it seems plausible that social movements are now more
likely to be couched in distinctly ethnic terms, as a function of self-determination norms and UN
declarations on minority rights. Instead, for most scholars, evidence that these movements are modern
rests on emergence of a shared identity of a “people” with boundaries beyond a parochial village or
kinship group (Anderson 1991; Brubaker et al. 2006). The irony is that many “modern” nationalist
movements (e.g., Islamic nationalist movements) have invoked themes demanding return to the past.

A fourth orienting question concerns the shift in the scope of activity: What are the mechanisms that
cause E/R/N movements to expand their scope from local concerns to encompass national goals?
Brubaker (1996) describes “nationness” as an institutional process that begins to crystallize with state-
expansion. Hechter’s (2000) theory asserts that nationalist movements reacted to the implementation of
direct rule by an external colonial or imperialist power. Global perspectives suggest that the density of
international connections among states may be reducing the significance of social movements bounded by
national borders (Olzak 2006).

Another set of issues raise questions about the nature of the relationship between the existence of ethnic
divisions and the likelihood of internal civil war. For instance, they ask, under what conditions does the
activation of ethnic boundaries promote armed conflict or separatist insurgencies? Several lines of
research have suggested that there is a strong link between ethnic cleavages and violence, in which group
differences mobilize and sustain the capacity for groups to incite civil wars. For instance, Sambanis
(2001) finds that civil wars based upon ethnic and/or religious identities are more likely to erupt in
countries with high levels of ethnic heterogeneity and low levels of political democracy (but see Fearon
and Laitin 2003).

Scholars have also explored the reverse causal argument. In this view, economic (or political) instability
results from prior conflict, or that economic decline follows the public’s anticipation of civil unrest. In an
attempt to sort out the causal ordering of economic effects on ethnic wars, current empirical evidence
supports the notion that economic decline raises rates of internal civil war, rather than the reverse, but that
political instability and state strength may be endogenous to the process of ethnic and nationalist
mobilization (see Olzak 2004).

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While the evidence connecting ethnic diversity to onset of armed conflict has been equivocal, ethnic
diversity may prolong the duration of civil wars. Fearon and Laitin (2003) find that the duration of violent
civil conflict increases when there are a small number of large ethnic groups, when there are conflicts
over land use, and when rebels have access to external (or contraband) resources.

Leading Theoretical Perspectives

Perspectives offering explanations of the emergence, growth, and decay of E/R/N social movements
emphasize one or more processes of changing economic, political, or social conditions. Each tradition has
generated a number of important empirical studies, which are linked together by common theoretical
concepts and mechanisms.

Colonialism and Ethnicity

The legacy of colonialism provides a number of instructive lessons for understanding the emergence and
timing of nationalist movements. Territorial boundaries drawn during periods of colonialist rule
(especially in Africa and the Middle East) provide examples of how colonialism encouraged ethnic
cleavages that subsequently form the basis of independence movements based upon ethnic nationalism.
During periods of state-formation, outcomes depend upon complicated negotiations between opponents,
nation-builders, and external participants. As norms of self-determination gained momentum
internationally, colonialist regimes became perceived as wielding illegitimate power over the indigenous
population. As a result, nationalist movements of independence often adopted an ethnic character, often
in contradistinction to colonialist racial/ethnic identities.

E/R/N movements are fundamentally embedded in (often contradictory) legends and myths about
various group identities and actions that have shaped their histories. Language, religion, immigration,
and migration histories all play a role in building the defining characteristics of a region. However,
periods of nation-building that coincide with independence movements apparently play a central role in
determining the nature of identity of an imagined “nation.”

State and Nation-building Processes

Theorists once assumed that the processes of state-building (obtaining legitimate authority and
administrative rights to govern a territory) and nation-building (building a sense of shared identity in a
population) should be analyzed as an evolutionary set of stages, such assumptions seem naive today.
Evidently the process of creating a legitimate nation with an accepted system of authority and leaders is
better conceptualized as a dynamic set of negotiated meanings (Brubaker 1996). National identities and
ethnic communities are constantly being reconstructed and boundary lines redrawn.

Anderson (1991) provided a useful starting place for understanding why nationalist and ethnic
movements aim to reconcile the lack of correspondence between state boundaries and national identity.
Hechter (2000), Fearon and Laitin (2003), and many others have emphasized the fact that few (if any)
nation-states are homogeneous entities; not only do states sometimes encompass many nations (as in the
notion of multiculturalism) but national movements can exist without espousing goals of statehood. If a
“nation” is demarcated by a self-identified boundary, then one nation may be dispersed across multiple
state boundaries (as in the concept of a Kurdish nation). Such movements may eventually express goals of
creating a new state organized around a common national identity. However host states will nearly always
resist these movements, often with force. This implies that, even if they are only temporarily successful,
ethnic movements can undermine attempts at state-building that assume that state and nationality
boundaries are coterminous.

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The literature on state-formation has suggested that ethnic movements are most likely to turn violent
during early periods of state-formation, when issues of power and authority remain unresolved (Hechter
2000). E/R/N movements are likely to confront newly independent (or newly democratic) regimes that
have not completely won the hearts and minds of all inhabitants. Outcomes depend upon a complicated
power balance among opponents, nation-builders, or external states, each of whom may have conflicting
interests.

Initial periods of state- and nation-building also play a central role in determining the nature of the
identity of an imagined “nation” (Anderson 1991). In this view, nations are “birth marked” by prior
conflicts—marked by religion, region, ethnicity, anti-colonialism, or conquest—that prevailed during a
formative historical period. Violence is especially likely when state-building efforts activate resistance
movements based upon these historic cleavages.

Economic and Instrumental Approaches

This tradition rests on the assumption that ethnic movements are better analyzed in terms of politically-
and/or economically-motivated demands rather than instigated by primordial ethnic identities (Blattman
and Miguel 2010). One prominent version of this line of argument suggests that ethnic social movements
are based upon shifts in economic inequalities among ethnic groups. Other instrumentalist positions
emphasize that ethnic movements are led by social movement leaders who use ethnic identities to gain
leverage over competitors in contests for political power.

Competition Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations

Competition theories of race/ethnic movements emerged to explain the puzzle prompted by the empirical
failure of modernization theory to account for the apparent rise in E/R/N movements in both developing
and developed countries. Competition theories of race and ethnic relations suggest that development
encourages competition to the extent that declines in ethnic and racial disadvantage occur. This in turn
triggers efforts by dominant groups to exclude competitors, using both legal and illegal methods against
minorities (Olzak 1992; Olzak and Shanahan 2003). Lynching, ethnic cleansing, and exclusionary laws
are prominent examples of strategies used against minorities (Olzak 2013).

Competition theory has been supported by empirical studies of Chinese laborers, United States labor
movement, contemporary South Africa, analyses of postindustrial racial conflict in the United States,
analyses of race and ethnic conflict in cities, and of lynching in rural areas in nineteenth-century United
States, and the former republics of the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania (Beissinger 2002; Olzak
2004).

Rational Choice and Game-Theoretic Approaches

Rational choice theorists state that modern ethnic movements occur with regularity because ethnic groups
lower monitoring costs and increase benefits attached to ethnic mobilization, allowing ethnic groups to
overcome the free-rider problems attached to other types of mobilization efforts (Hechter 2000). The U.S.
civil rights movement has also been analyzed within a rational-choice framework that emphasizes how
mobilization that increases disruptions and concession costs to elites has proven decisive to successful
movement outcomes (Luders 2010).

Because ethnic groups are able to form dense social networks easily, costs of monitoring commitment are
minimized, which fosters ethnic mobilization. Building on rational choice models, Fearon and Laitin

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(1996) have linked the strategic aspects of ethnic identity to violence, as elites build on existing ethnic
loyalties (see also Petersen 2002). Such loyalties can prove fatal to group members. Moreover, the
presence of genocidal norms (defined as a threat of sanctions to in-group members who decline
participation in ethnic mayhem) increases the scale of ethnic violence. This perspective offers an
explanation for one persistent and counterintuitive finding in the literature: Despite a history of intergroup
cooperation, tolerance, intermarriage, and trust among different groups interacting within a region, the
intensity of ethnic cleansing and violence can remain high, due to the presence of genocidal norms.

Similarly, theorists have extended these ideas to consider the implications of game theory for ethnic
mobilization, including outbreak of ethnic war (Fearon and Laitin 1996). While armed ethnic rebellions
tend to last longer than nonethnic ones (Fearon 2004), a variety of ethnic and cultural characteristics have
few systematic effects on the onset or duration of civil wars in general (Fearon and Laitin 2003).

Political/Institutional Approaches
Political perspectives emphasize the role of shifts in political constraints and opportunity structures that
influence the trajectory of E/R social movements. These theories emphasize institutional arrangements,
court rulings and reforms, and regional concentration of ethnic populations as viable political instruments
leading to mobilization. Two studies from India illustrate these points. For instance, Chandra (2004)
argues that political systems based upon ethnic patronage systems can inadvertently provide the
foundation for permanent hostilities. Alternatively, Varshney (2002) finds that when business, civic, and
voluntary associations integrate and/or cross-cut ethnic lines, ethnic confrontations are significantly less
likely to erupt (see also Horowitz 2001).

In cross-national studies of the influence of political structures, some scholars have emphasize the
centrifugal force of ethnic political parties, which maintains ethnic loyalties through institutional
arrangements and patronage based on ethnic loyalties. Such forces produce fierce loyalties when
language, religion or some other marker also distinguishes a population that is geographically
concentrated (Fearon and Laitin 2003). Other scholars have emphasize proximate causes or triggering
mechanisms, such as political changes in authority, collapse of colonial authorities or empires, or
transition to market economies, which presumably increases ethnic inequality and promotes ethnic
competition (Chua 2003).

Political structures can be arrayed along a continuum that indicates the extent to which political parties
become ethnic vehicles for contesting power. One view of ethnic party systems (“consociationalism”)
holds that these arrangements reduce ethnic tensions by channeling extra-institutional mobilization and
energy within institutionalized party contests. Alternatively, ethnic parties may instead actively encourage
ethnic mobilization because they render ethnic boundaries more salient. Wilkinson (2004) finds empirical
support for this argument, reporting that states with a high degree of institutionalization of ethnic parties
in states in India produces significantly higher rates of ethnic violence and hostility (see also Varshney
2002).

Weak States, Regime Instability, and Ethnic Mobilization

States often respond to challenges from nationalist movements by alternating between strategies of
repression and concession (Hechter 2000). For example, the evidence suggests that states shift from
strategies of repression to accommodation, depending on both the virulence of dissident protest behavior
and state capacity to repress these challenges. However, others have suggested the intriguing hypothesis
that it is the vacillation of states itself that incites nationalist violence, signaling a weakness in the state’s
internal capacity to act (Olzak 2004).

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The potential for ethnic separatism also influences the intensity of collective violence in a country and
this effect is stronger in states with weakened political institutions. Evidence from civil wars in Bosnia
and Kosovo provide another example of how regime instability shapes opportunities for E/R/N
movements. At the same time, policies that involve ethnic resettlement programs often concentrate ethnic
populations and create new networks that provide new recruits for mobilizing ethnic violence, as
examples from the West Bank in Israel, or the Kurds in Germany, suggest. Thus transitions to democracy
may mobilize ethnic movements by offering new political advantages to ethnic groups that were more
easily submerged in repressive regimes.

The imposition of external political authority on ethnic minorities compared to imposition of structures of
indirect authority has important consequences for ethnic and nationalist movements. Hechter (2000) has
argued that the seeds of nationalist movements are embedded in specific political structural arrangements
in which a colonial or federated authority cedes formal authority to local leaders. Under such conditions,
local elites are delegated political power and authority by centralized authorities, yet the power of local
elites is fundamentally based upon regional identities and loyalties. When central authority is weakened
or challenged (by external events such as war, famine, or economic crises), or when central authority is
withdrawn (as in the case of the Soviet Union), local elites can mobilize on the basis of regional/ethnic
identity.

Institutional Forms of Ethnic Exclusion

Wimmer, Cederman and Min (2009) emphasize an argument that suggests that the form of
E/R/N movements will take depends upon a regime’s formal institutional arrangements that exclude or
privilege members of ethnic populations. Exclusion can take the form of formal disenfranchisement (as in
the case of South Africa under apartheid), or more discriminatory patterns of ethnic favoritism,
clientelism, and other forms (Wimmer 2002). Research consistent with this perspective suggests that
ethnic conflict peaks under conditions in which exclusionary practices, demographic polarization and
ethnic inequality interact (Esteban, Mayoral, and Ray 2012; Blattman and Miguel 2010).

Brubaker (2011) reflects these themes in his work on ethnonationalism in former Soviet states. While
some have argued that ethnic tensions and nativist movements have arisen as Soviet power and authority
(and resources) related to Cold War alliances declined in importance. Brubaker (2011) argues that the
federated system of regional and ethnically defined republics in the Soviet Union created the structural
basis for ultimate disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Cultural and Cognitive Perspectives

Recent theoretical analyses emphasize both the cultural and cognitive components of social movements,
suggesting that group identity is both an important mobilizing strategy and a consequence of
mobilization. In particular, movements invoke one or more cultural themes of nationalism, rights of self-
determination, expansion of human rights, and basic rights of sovereignty (Brubaker 2004). Another line
of argument within this cognitive tradition emphasizes the causal role of emotion in producing and
escalating ethnic violence. In this view fear, resentment, and revenge play a key role in determining the
conditions under which widespread ethnic cleansing and rioting occur (Horowitz 2001; Petersen 2002).
Scholars from this tradition emphasize the importance of historical contingencies that seek to identify the
particular historical outcomes that are shaped by broad cultural factors as well as idiosyncratic twists of
fate.

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An advantage of this view is that ethnic identity can be analyzed as the result (rather than the cause) of
collective action. This insight opens up the possibility for studying how social mechanisms of contact,
conflict, borrowing, and other forms of interaction cause new ethnic or racial categories to emerge.
Interesting questions about the collective nature of conflict arise. For example, as group violence and
revenge escalates on either side to a conflict, small-scale or individual skirmishes became redefined as
events requiring a collective response. In analyzing forces escalating group conflict, scholars from the
cognitive tradition emphasize the emergent properties of both identities and conflict.

Research guided by this tradition tends to focus on ethnic social movements that did occur, which limits
the explanatory power of such studies. Another drawback of a purely cognitive perspective is that it is
difficult to determine the causal ordering of emergent group identity and ethnic mobilization.

Globalization and the Internationalization of Ethnic/Nationalist

Movements
Economic and political crises that once affected only local areas now have repercussions in vastly
different and formerly unconnected regions and states. Since the advent of modern media, civil wars,
terrorist acts, and acts by ethnic social movements have produced reactions across national borders.
Taking an international perspective helps clarify how economic interdependence within states has
reinvigorated ethnic politics.

Transnational Ethnic Social Movements

Transnational social movements (TSMs) are social movements that span multiple national borders, target
forces of global integration, or are social movements that concern global-level issues (e.g. global
environmental concerns). Regional associations such as the EU, OPEC, NATO, and other supranational
organizations promote interstate migration and decrease reliance of regions within states on the military
and economic power of the nation-state. Multistate organizations also provide an audience for insurgent
groups demanding new sovereignty rights (Koopmans and Statham 2000). In this view, an increasingly
dense network of international economic relations, exemplified by multinational corporations, growing
trade and foreign investment, and supranational economic associations, will continue to produce more
large-scale ethnic movements.

International Governmental Associations

One (perhaps unanticipated) consequence of the integration of the European Union is that ethnic tensions
have risen rather dramatically (Koopmans and Statham 2000). Furthermore, as political and economic
barriers have declined, labor (and capital) flow move more freely across states. However, one potential
consequence of increasing flows of foreign workers across borders has been that new right-wing parties
across Western Europe have mobilized sentiment against foreign workers. To the extent that the
integration of the European Union has restructured local politics within European countries, the
opportunity has arisen for ethnic politics on both sides of the immigration question. As a consequence,
antiforeigner sentiment, nationalist political parties, and attacks on foreigners also appear to be rising in
most Western European countries, especially in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and England
(Koopmans and Olzak 2004).

This perspective suggests that individual states will become less powerful in negotiations when
confronting non-state actors and/or transnational movements than in the past. As state economies and
politics become more integrated, international associations and events occurring outside state boundaries

8
will become increasingly salient. It seems likely that as integration of the world’s states (politically,
diplomatically, and economically) proceeds, ethnic groups become less constrained by their own state
authorities. The growing predominance of an integrated set of states ironically decreases the ability of any
one state to direct all of its internal affairs. Moreover, highly integrated nation-states cannot simply
repress, jail, or torture the ethnic challengers, without risking international condemnation, sanctions, and
boycotts. Furthermore, neighboring countries may directly or indirectly finance campaigns of instability,
using political refugees or exiles as mercenary soldiers. There is growing evidence on transnational
environmental and human rights movements that supports these contentions (Olzak 2006).

Diffusion of ideologies, resources, and personnel has accelerated these trends. Ethnic social movements
occurring in neighboring countries have powerful diffusion properties, destabilizing or threatening nearby
regimes. Sambanis (2001) argues that elite factions (or warlords) offering military and financial support
from neighboring countries have played crucial roles in prolonging ethnic wars in Africa and Central Asia
in recent years. Although it is difficult to study (because many of the transactions are clandestine and
sources of data are unreliable), corruption feeds upon an increased flow of arms, mercenaries, illegal
drugs. It is likely that networks of local warlords also fuel ethnic wars (without state or international
sanctions) in neighboring countries (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Fearon 2004).

Globalization and Ethnic Conflict

A global strategy offers arguments about forces of globalization that produce inequality, competition, and
mobilization. Olzak (2006) holds that integration of a world economic and political system has
encouraged ethnic fragmentation within states. It does so by increasing access of formerly disadvantaged
groups to political resources, creating new political opportunities for mobilizing, and increasing levels of
economic inequality in peripheral countries, which increases the potential for competition and conflict
among groups within these states. As the world’s states have become more directly linked through
communication and media channels, information about inequality and claims for redress of this inequality
has increased sharply. Thus, global forces of integration tend to crystallize and empower local level
cleavages, increasing solidarity and heighten the capacity to mobilize movements challenging state
authority.

Global perspectives suggest another way that an ideology supporting human rights has accelerated the
acceptance of an ideology supporting minority rights, especially ethnic ones. In this view, as the
worldwide human rights movement gained momentum, claims for national sovereignty, group rights, and
freedom became intertwined. In this view, as nation-states became linked together in networks of military
and economic associations, national political boundaries weaken and political regimes become vulnerable
to international and external challenges. The same forces that encouraged the diffusion of nationalism as
an ideology also affect ethnic movements within and between state boundaries.

Military interdependence constitutes an obvious way that international relations affect conflicts within
countries. Although such strategies are not new, superpowers arm and train ethnic and subnational groups
in order to stabilize or in some cases destabilize regimes. The cases of rebellions financed and supported
by transnational forces (on both sides of the struggles) in civil wars in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Vietnam,
Sudan, Iraq, and many other settings illustrate this point. If arguments suggesting a link between
international networks and E/R/N movements are correct, then an increase in transnational processes
could potentially weaken the viability of the nation-state as a main organizing strategy for territorial
authority and control.

Pan-Ethnic/Religious Movements

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Reactive movements are based upon pan-ethnic (or ethno-religious) claims that span national borders.
Such movements often espouse ideologies that contrast with Western models of the so-called liberal state.
In the contemporary era, some of these movements have been characterized as loosely connected by anti-
modernist claims that have a basis in both ethnic identity and religious fundamentalism. These
movements espouse a form of identity politics (such as the wearing of head scarves), but they diverge
from typical nationalist movements because they rarely express specific claims to govern specific
territories. Whether or not such movements will continue to gain momentum remains an open question.

Evaluation of Various Perspectives

Many scholars analyze different types of E/R/N movements separately, by historical period, regional
groupings, by specific goals or tactics. While it has become popular for scholars to claim that E/R/N
movements are produced by a constellation of historically contingent factors, this strategy has hampered
our ability to develop powerful explanations that identify some general mechanisms of social change. Yet
other social scientists have demonstrated that there are substantial theoretical payoffs attached to
analyzing the similarities across E/R/N movements. By paying attention to the commonalities among
forms of ethnic and nationalist movements, we stand to gain more leverage over questions about how
protest escalates and diffuses, or how spontaneous protests become transformed into sustained (or violent)
social movements that challenge existing authority structures.

Approaches that seek to emphasize the continuities and discontinuities among social movements and their
emergent forms allow cumulative and testable theories to be constructed and evaluated. In contrast, if
multiple types of ethnic mobilization (from civil rights movements to ethnic civil wars) are analyzed
separately by country, time period, and movement goals, it becomes impossible to know when to stop
creating new categories and crafting unique explanations to cover each new occurrence of a nationalist
event or ethnic campaign. Truly comparative work that seeks to build theories that can be falsified
empirically holds far more promise than does a strategy that views each movement as a unique and
separate category. In the context of complex dynamics of transnational social movements, activists and
organizations engage in activity that engages and activates ethnic identity within nations. Such reactive
movements can have reverberations to kindred or disaporic groups beyond a single nation. Understanding
the commonalities among these forms in the context of a global system seems especially relevant.

Assessing the relative importance of various causal factors explaining ethnic movements over time is also
hampered by the fact that ethnic and racial boundaries (and labels) often change over time. Answers to
questions about the nature and trajectory of ethnic movements lie in conducting careful empirical analyses
and comparisons of different kinds of events -- ethnic, civil rights, national, religious, civil wars, and
autonomy social movements of various kinds that share some (but not all) root causes.

Recent trends have taken these dynamics into account by emphasizing the emergence of a more densely
connected global system. The globalization of social movements has led current research on ethnic and
national movements away from a sole emphasis on internal features of states and toward the international
context of collective actions. Clearly the internationalization of a world economy and political integration
of organizational, diplomatic, and trade linkages have prompted us to reconsider previous assumptions
that rest on stable characteristics of states. Research reviewed here depicts social movements that have
produced strikingly similar social movements that share similar forms, goals, tactics, and ideologies. Thus
theories that focus solely on the internal bases of discontent now seem short sighted.

A resulting network of economic and political ties based upon ethnicity potentially unites populations in
different states but divides them against their own host states. As a consequence, ethnic mobilization at
the global level provides fertile ground for new types of movements based upon national, ethnic, and

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other cultural identities. Such movements can be simultaneously local and international in scope. Because
of this flexibility, E/R/N are able to shift strategies quickly and adapt to changing political and economic
conditions. By turning to explanations firmly based on theories of international connections and
processes, we may be better able to understand the emergence of new forms of nationalism.

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