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The post-Cold War decline of conflict has turned into an increase both within and between states. Many observers interpret this development as the return of geopolitics and great power competition. Shifting the focus to nationalist geopolitics, we link this violent resurgence to the exclusion of ethnic groups and their transborder kin. Using newly collected data on ethnic power relations, we explore trends in ethnic exclusion and conflict, analyze difference-in-difference models to establish a connection between these trends, and build counterfactual scenarios to assess the violent impact of ethnic nationalism since the early 2010s. Overall, our analysis confirms that liberal backsliding has contributed to increased conflict around the world, a trend shift that cannot be reduced to intensified great power competition.

About the Speaker

Lars-Erik Cederman is professor of international conflict research at ETH Zürich. He is the author of Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve (Princeton University Press, 1997), and co-author of Inequality, Grievances and Civil War (with Kristian Gleditsch and Halvard Buhaug; Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Sharing Power, Securing Peace? Ethnic Inclusion and Civil War (with Simon Hug and Julian Wucherpfennig; Cambridge University Press 2022). He has published many articles in scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, World Politics, American Journal of Sociology, and Science. His main research interests include nationalism, state formation and conflict processes.