Drawing a Boundary between Structural Factors and Identity in Ethnic Conflict : Bringing Back the Role of Identity

This article focuses on the causes of ethnic civil wars, and argues that
in order to develop a better understanding of their onset and intractability, one needs to distinguish different types of ethnic civil wars
from each other. It first evaluates structural factors in the outbreak of
ethnic conflict and then proceeds to discuss ideational factors and
finally suggests a theoretic framework of understanding ethnic con flict based upon identity. It develops hypotheses that would allow to
discern structuralist explanations from ideational ones and in this
way contributes to the literature that tries to understand the causes
of ethnic civil wars. To have a clear understanding of the suggested
hypotheses, empirical evidence is provided from the post-Soviet
space, namely conflicts such as Abkhazia, Crimea, Chechnya,
Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia.