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Why did the âPearl of the Indian Oceanâ become the site of so much destruction and conflict that it became known as the âIsland of Tearsâ? At independence in 1948, Sri Lanka was predicted to be a success story in the developing world. A robust economy, a significant welfare state that protected low income-earners from adverse changes in the international economy, nearly two decades of universal suffrage and peaceful political competition, a well-funded and expanding public education system, all in the context of peaceful inter-ethnic relations. To boot, Sri Lanka had one of the highest GDP per capita incomes in Asia.1
However, in July 1983, a violent ethnic conflict, which pitted the Sinhalese against the Tamils and lasted until 2009, began. This conflict has resulted in nearly 50,000 combatant deaths and approximately 40,000 civilian deaths, while also leading to nearly one million internally displaced refugees and the permanent migration abroad of nearly 130,000 civilians. Its economic costs, measured in direct and indirect costs, have exceeded 20 billion USD, nearly twice the size of Sri Lankaâs 1996 Gross Domestic Product.
Prima facie, primordial approaches should be able to account for this case of ethnic conflict. Sri Lanka has always been a multi-ethnic society.2 This heterogeneity has been characterized by a high level of ethno-linguistic and religious fractionalization, a spatial segregation concentration along ethnic lines, and significant Sinhalese numerical superiority over the Tamils.3 Multiethnic countries with deeply rooted ethno-linguistic fractionalization overlaid with religious fractionalization should end up in conflict.4 For the primordialists, all the ingredients for the onset of ethnic conflict have been present in Sri Lanka: limited inter-marriage rates, high levels of ethnic distance, and a high level of spatial concentration that renders territory inherently indivisible. These features comprise all the preconditions for the emergence of inter-ethnic tensions, irreversibly culminating in an acute ethnic security dilemma. As such, this long-standing ethnic heterogeneity should lead to violent ethnic conflict because, for primordialists, it is ethnic identity that mobilizes individuals and not vice versa.
And yet, this âNorthern Irelandâ in South Asia managed to engage in peaceful inter-ethnic co-existence for centuries. Even when the preconditions for ethnic conflict were more conducive than its actual outbreak in 1983, i.e. when the British transferred sovereignty, Sri Lanka did not collapse into violent ethnic conflict. Similarly, this high level of ethno-linguistic fractionalization between Sinhalese and Tamils has not led to violent conflict between the Sinhalese and the Indian Tamils despite both Tamil groups sharing similar characteristics.5
More importantly, the primordialistsâ insistence on ethnic heterogeneity accounting for the onset of ethnic conflict cannot account for the continued intra-ethnic divisions among the Tamils â between Indian Tamils and Sri Lanka Tamils.6 Nor can it account for the lengthy history of Low Country and Up Country (Kandyan) Sinhalese intra-ethnic differences that were almost institutionalized in the 1920s. In effect, primordial arguments cannot account for either the recent construction of both Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic identities â which over-emphasizes their immutability and rigidity â or their relevance in terms of mass political mobilization without revising how ethnicity has become politically salient in modern Sri Lanka.7
Instrumentalist approaches have stressed how political leaders have used ethnicity to generate political action.8 In effect, the instrumentalist approaches have focused on how Sri Lankan political entrepreneurs have sought to convince, entice, and manipulate individual ethnic group members in activating their ethnic identity as the basis for mass political mobilization. By focusing on the manner in which Sri Lankan political elites of all ethnic backgrounds have engaged in top-down ethnic mobilization drives, instrumentalists have consistently argued that these ethnic mobilization drives have created increasingly exclusivist and rigid ethnic boundaries.9 Given the zero-sum nature of competition among political elites for power, these mobilization drives rendered these ethnic boundaries permanent and led ethnic group members to perceive political and economic outcomes in a zero-sum fashion. For instrumentalists, such an ethnic mobilization can only increase the potential for inter-ethnic tensions and violent ethnic conflict.
However, this argument nearly always assumes that the individual ethnic member on the ground is too uneducated or too pre-occupied to realize that the goals of the political entrepreneurs are self-serving. In effect, it fails to account that it takes two, meaning both ethnic political entrepreneurs and ethnic group members, to tango. While it accurately explains the emergence of ethnic political entrepreneurs who are hell-bent on utilizing ethnicity for mobilization purposes, it fails to account for the different levels of support these ethnic political entrepreneurs received from their ethnic brethren. Put differently, it fails to account for the demand side of the ethnic mobilization drive when it cannot account for why ethnic group members chose to join these drives. As such, it cannot account for the timing of the violence and the unequal level of support that these ethnic political entrepreneurs received from ethnic group members.
Institutional accounts have argued that Sri Lankan political leaders were unable to create durable institutional arrangements, capable of accommodating the historically determined ethnic heterogeneity, and, as such, to manage interethnic tensions.10 Consequently, institutionalists have argued that the collapse of Sri Lanka into violent ethnic conflict occurred because of the decaying nature of the institutions which had been established to manage the majoritarian demands of the Sinhalese and the protection that the minority Tamils demanded.11 Much as in other cases, Sri Lankan political elites could not maintain their elite-level bargains in the face of intra-ethnic political competition for leadership and the bidding wars that this intra-ethnic competition brought about.
However, this emphasis on institutions has been based on a reified notion of what political institutions are and what they can do in multi-ethnic polities. For example, if institutions could have prevented the collapse of Sri Lanka into violent ethnic conflict, why did the 1948 constitution, with its emphasis on the protection of minority rights, prove incapable of protecting the Indian Tamils from electoral disenfranchisement? Additionally, why did the successive inter-ethnic, elite-level consocational agreements of the 1960s stop operating in the 1970s despite the continued presence of the same ethnic political elites? More importantly, why did these institutional bargains fail in the presence of the same structural incentives for intra-ethnic political competition? The institutionalist approaches have a hard time conceptualizing the interests and incentives that determine political action even in the context of particularly well-thought and -developed institutional designs.
Political arguments have stressed how state-sanctioned, ethnic-based discrimination led to the onset of ethnic conflict. Being variations on the grievance arguments, they have sought to explain the onset of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka as solely the result of increased Tamil radicalization in the face of continuously increasing Sinhalese discrimination. However, despite placing politics at the center of their analyses, they cannot explain the timing or the mechanisms behind the onset of conflict.12 Put differently, they cannot explain why the Tamils engaged in mass mobilization in the late 1970s and not in the early 1970s when their level of grievances against the actions of the Sinhalese-dominated state was significantly higher.
Additionally, in terms of the causal mechanisms of ethnic mobilization, political arguments cannot present an accurate picture of how grievance leads to mobilization without relying on ad hoc intervening variables. As long as they posit a nearly linear causal chain between grievance and ethnic mobilization they cannot account for the different rates of Tamil ethnic mobilization associated with territorial concentration, caste differences and different occupational profiles even when Tamils suffered the same level of state-sanctioned discrimination. Indeed, intra-ethnic heterogeneity matters, but political arguments perceive ethnic groups as fixed and cohesive.
Marxist approaches have focused on class analysis.13 For Marxists, post-independence Sri Lanka was characterized by both inter- and intra-ethnic increasing income inequality and poverty. While the intra-ethnic income inequality increased the chances for the radicalization of both the Sinhalese and Tamil working classes, the increasing levels of inter-ethnic income inequality enabled the bourgeois political entrepreneurs to focus the aspirations of the Sinhalese working class for increased wealth through control over the state. Accordingly, instead of witnessing the emergence of an inter-ethnic, working-class coalition intent upon transforming Sri Lankaâs political economy, Sri Lanka experienced the aggressions of the two working classes misdirected at each other. Much like the other arguments, this line of argumentation appears accurate at first glance.
Upon closer inspection, though, the Marxist analyses cannot account for numerous empirical developments. If increased income inequality led to the emergence of ethnic mobilization, why the absence of any form of ethnic mobilization on the part of the Indian Tamils who were consistently the poorest sub-group of the Sri Lankan working class? If there ever was an ethnic group for which ethnicity overlapped with economic marginalization, it was the Indian Tamils. But throughout post-colonial Sri Lankan history, scholars and practitioners have failed to examine their unwillingness to engage in ethnic mobilization. Additionally, if income inequality mattered causally, why did Tamil ethnic mobilization increase in the 1970â7 period, when the Sri Lankan state engaged in the greatest amount of income redistribution in their favor?
Political economy approaches have the stressed the causal effects of increased economic liberalization upon the onset of ethnic conflict.14 Mirroring theoretical approaches that stress the catalytic role of the international economy in the genesis of mass ethnic mobilization, political economy approaches have argued that the increased integration of Sri Lanka into the international economy increased the asymmetric distribution of benefits and losses along ethnic lines. As such, they provided the missing spark for the commencement of mass Tamil mobilization and the onset of ethnic conflict.
However, political economy approaches fail to incorporate the obvious: namely, that the increased economic integration of Sri Lanka into the international economy aided the Tamils because it greatly reduced the Sinhalese-led ethnicization of the economy while increasing the opportunities for Tamil upward economic mobility outside of the Sinhalese-dominated state. If anything, political economy approaches have tended to conflate correlation with causation in their analyses of the Sri Lankan case of ethnic conflict.
I disagree with the aforementioned arguments, offering a very different causal argument.
My analysis of Sri Lanka shows how changes in the level of economic liberalization interact with the different levels of mobilizational resources that ethnic groups possess to cause the onset of ethnic conflict. Since I conceptualize ethnic mobilization as a collective action process, replete with the usual free rider problems and coordination issues, I emphasize the importance of selective incentives and material resources as âclub goodsâ in the ethnic groupâs leadership toolkit as a way to resolve these problems. While mobilizational resources can vary exogenously to this process, the level of these selective incentives and material resources that can be allocated is inextricably linked to the level of economic liberalization. While governing political leaders can change this level of economic liberalization in the long term, it cannot easily change in the short term.
But any change in the level of economic liberalization affects the credibility of the actions of the different ethnic group leaders. At low levels of economic liberalization, those who are in control of the state with its panoply of interventionist measures, high levels of material resources that can be selectively allocated to supporters, and significant job opportunities can buy off the support of their ethnic group members as well as the tacit acquiescence of segments of the other ethnic groups. Similarly, minority ethnic group leaders cannot credibly convince their ethnic group brethren to join any mobilization against the governing elites because their potential supporters are aware that these minority ethnic group members cannot allocate resources to them since they do not control the state. At high levels of economic liberalization those who control the state, which is a bare-bones version of the liberal ânight-watchmanâ state, cannot promise much without reducing the level of economic liberalization to either their own ethnic group members or the minority ethnic group members. Similarly, the minority ethnic group members cannot use control of the state as a rallying mechanism for ethnic mobilization since successful collective action would not positively affect their supportersâ livelihoods.
However, at medium levels of economic liberalization, control of the state does matter. While having fewer resources at its disposal than at low levels of economic liberalization, at medium levels of economic liberalization governing elites can credibly and effectively promise their ethnic group members that successful ethnic mobilization drives can pay off for them materially. Winners can reward themselves and target losers for the financing of the spoils. Similarly, minority ethnic group le...
