Most analysts interpret the return of geopolitics through the lens of recent interstate conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East. This paper focuses on an equally disturbing trend, namely an increase in ethnic civil war. We argue that, similar to the worrying developments at the interstate level, this rise in civil conflict is grounded in rising ethno-nationalist politics inside states. After some initial turbulence, the post-Cold War period exhibited a period of declining conflict. From the early 2020s, however, the trend turned upwards and continued to do so. We use newly collected data on ethnic power relations to explain this development in terms of an increase in ethno-political exclusion, while also considering country-level data on nationalism and democracy. To this end, we rely on descriptive trend analysis, difference-in-difference models and predictive modeling that contrasts real data to counterfactual scenarios.

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.