The Tower that Can’t Be Completed: The Impact of Language Differences on Civil Conflict
Restricted (Penn State Only)
Author:
Aronson, Lillian
Area of Honors:
International Politics
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Douglas Lemke, Thesis Supervisor Matthew Richard Golder, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
civil conflict ethnicity ethnic differences language religion
Abstract:
As the most prevalent form of large-scale violence, civil war continues to be a debilitating feature of international relations. But what factors are associated with civil war? For millennia, language differences have been recognized as a barrier to communication and potential source of conflict. They can lead to misunderstandings and serve as a marker of social identity that differentiates members of one group from members of another. Using Ethnic Power Relations data and the Armed Conflict Database of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Peace Research Institute of Oslo, I conduct a logit regression analysis examining how two common ethnic cleavages – language and religious differences – contribute to the onset of civil conflict. I find a statistically significant relationship between language differences and the onset of civil conflict and an insignificant relationship between religious differences and the onset of war.
