With the increase in intra-state violence since the 1990s, the study of ethnic and religious conflict has become an area of increasing interest and an important literature. Despite this growing literature, McCauley's book addresses questions of considerable importance that have not been rigorously analyzed: do individuals’ associations with their ethnic identity (i.e., ethno-tribal or kinship ties) and religious identity inspire distinct policy preferences? In contexts where religion and ethnicity are overlapping, salient cleavages, why does political violence sometimes take on an ethnic as opposed to a religious dimension? Does it matter? Grounding his research in extant theory and employing an array of methodological tools and compelling case studies, McCauley makes a persuasive case for the disaggregation of ethnicity in the study of ethnic conflict. To the extent that scholars treat ethnicity as merely an umbrella category for various group identities, The Logic of Ethnic and Religious Conflict in Africa demonstrates that our understanding of the relationship between political preferences or mobilization and ethnic identities is short-changed.
To make the case for disaggregating ethnicity, McCauley focuses his analysis on African cases where religion and ethnicity are highly salient, overlapping cleavages. Through this analysis, the book finds that ethnic and religious identities inspire distinct policy preferences. Individuals who more strongly associate with their ethnic ties are more likely to hold stronger local development or “land-based” policy preferences, while individuals who more strongly associate with their religious identity hold stronger policy preferences on moral or “rule-based” issues. Further, McCauley contends that political entrepreneurs recognize the distinct strategic advantages of mobilizing populations by evoking either ethnic or religious frames, and this has significant consequences for the course of conflict. Where conditions are ripe for inter-group violence or civil war, a shift in political emphasis from ethnic to religious cleavages can increase the scope and intensity of violence, as evidenced in the book's case studies on Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Sudan. Showing how political entrepreneurs strategically mobilize these identities to accomplish their political goals, McCauley strikes a careful balance between instrumentalist theory, with its emphasis on conflict as the product of strategic manipulation, and constructivist theory, with its emphasis on the fluidity and malleability of identity.
The major contribution of this book for the study of ethnic and religious politics is its demonstration that, while the salience of ethnic identities is indeed fluid, the degree of fluidity and the ideas and values associated with different ethnic identities has important political implications. Not only can individuals’ policy preferences vary in accordance with the strength of their ethnic associations, but their inter-group perceptions and incentives for violent mobilization can also differ. Consequently, political entrepreneurs who recognize the strategic and distinctive political value of appealing to religious differences and values can shift the potential for political and violent mobilization, even as ethnic group size is unchanged.
While McCauley does not argue that religious identity is inherently prone to violence, his analysis shows how conflicts can extend beyond their original group boundaries when religious identity becomes the primary conflict frame. Indeed, the discussion of the ethnic-to-religious shift presented in the case study chapters persuasively shows how such framing can draw in transnational actors and support as the populations of other states, their governments, and humanitarian organizations take interest in the plight of co-religionists elsewhere.
McCauley's conclusions are based on multiple analytic methods, which is itself a contribution to the study of ethnic and religious politics. The book draws on carefully designed research experiments in both Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana in different parts of each country (requiring considerable logistical efforts), a cross-border natural experiment, extensive interviews, and in-depth case studies. The experiment designs are interesting, and their combination with interviews and case studies provides a model for other scholars and students of ethnic politics to follow. One critique is that the experiments do not show whether or how individuals’ ethnic and religious associations differently shape their attitudes toward inter-group conflict and violent mobilization, specifically. Yet this modest critique merely suggests that McCauley's work offers an excellent jumping off point for pursuing related research questions.
In that respect, the book's conclusions provide solid ground for future inquiries. Under what conditions, for example, is the politicization of religion effective in generating valuable transnational support? Further, what factors determine the failure or success of identity framing in mobilizing populations? If religious framing is a particularly useful political strategy, why do we not see mobilization of religious identity everywhere it is highly salient? It suggests, perhaps, that political entrepreneurs have to consider the potential moral and political costs of invoking religion willy-nilly, or that strategic mobilization requires careful consideration of how they articulate the religious appeal or the consequences for their legitimacy if they fail. While these questions are beyond the specific aims of the book, the argument and findings suggest considerable scope for further analysis.
In short, The Logic of Ethnic and Religious Conflict in Africa is a major contribution to the study of ethnicity, politics, and conflict, and the findings will no doubt inspire further research. McCauley effectively demonstrates through careful (and painstaking) research methods that the categories of ethnicity should be disaggregated if we are to better understand how ethnicity shapes political preferences and conflict. While the book is focused on the African context—in which ethnic and religious identities are most salient—the implications and applicability extend, as the book suggests, to other contexts where there are multiple salient cleavages political actors might exploit. This is an important book that should be read not only by scholars of African politics, but also those who study ethnicity and politics broadly speaking, as it calls for more careful analysis of the role of specific identities (i.e., religion, tribe, race, language, and caste) so often collapsed under the broad label of “ethnic” politics.
