Ethnic Inequality and National Pride

What is it about?

Previous cross-national research has shown that both inter-group political inequality and inter-group economic inequality affect the chances of ethnic civil war. This paper examines the micro-foundations of these findings by using data from the World Values Survey to examine the effect of inter-group political inequality and inter-group economic inequality on attitudinal manifestations of national pride. The paper demonstrates that inter-group political inequality produces negative affect towards the nation-state, but inter-group economic inequality has no such effect. The results suggest that the aggregate finding linking inter-group economic inequality with the chances of ethnic civil war needs to be assessed. More generally, it suggests that in deeply hierarchical societies considerations of relative identity and social status are more likely to be focal points of ethnic conflict than economic considerations.

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