TITLE:
Ethnic Nepotism as a Cross-Cultural Background Factor of Ethnic Conflicts
AUTHORS:
Tatu Vanhanen
KEYWORDS:
Ethnic Nepotism, Ethnic Heterogeneity, Cross-Cultural, Conflicts
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.4 No.3,
July
31,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this article
has been to explore why ethnic conflicts tend to break out in all ethnically
divided societies. The principal explanation was traced to the evolved
disposition for ethnic nepotism shared by all human populations. Ethnic
nepotism was measured roughly by the degree of ethnic heterogeneity of the
populations. It was correlated with the scale of ethnic conflicts in the group
of 187 countries. The results of correlation analysis indicate that ethnic
heterogeneity explains 55% of the variation in the scale of ethnic conflicts,
and the results of regression analysis disclose that the same relationship more
or less applies to all 187 countries. These results led to the conclusion that
ethnic nepotism is the common cross-cultural background factor which supports
the persistence of ethnic conflicts in the world as long as there are
ethnically divided societies.