Much of the recent literature on civil war treats explanations rooted in political and economic grievances with considerable suspicion, and many empirical studies conclude that there is no relationship between ethnic diversity or measures of inequality and political violence to support such...

Scholars who study the effect of ethnicity on conflict usually refrain from considering different dimensions of ethnicity such as language and religion. In recent years, however, some have argued that conflicts are more likely to occur across religious divisions rather than linguistic ones. Such...