Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization is not Enough to Explain Ethnic Politics: Evidence from Benin and Senegal

We show that cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity on their own are not enough to describe ethnic political organization, but that co-ethnics need to reliably use ethnicity as a signal of cultural alignment. Using Benin and Senegal as a case study, we show that the overlap between cultural fractionalization and ethnolinguistic fractionalization in the two countries are statistically different from one another. Evidence from 2000 simulations and the Komolgrov-Smirnov test suggests that the degree to which cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity overlap serves as a first step in explaining why we observe political organization around ethnicity in Benin and not in Senegal--even though the two have statistically indistinguishable levels of ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity. This work informs the broader question of why ethnic politics emerge in some ethnically diverse settings and not in others.

本研究表明，仅依靠文化多样性（cultural diversity）与民族语言多样性（ethnolinguistic diversity），不足以阐释族群政治组织的形成逻辑；同族裔群体需可靠地将族群身份作为文化契合的信号。本研究以贝宁（Benin）与塞内加尔（Senegal）为案例，证实两国的文化碎片化指数（cultural fractionalization）与民族语言碎片化指数（ethnolinguistic fractionalization）的重叠程度在统计学上存在显著差异。通过2000次模拟实验与柯尔莫哥洛夫-斯米尔诺夫检验（Komolgrov-Smirnov test）的实证结果可见，尽管贝宁与塞内加尔的民族语言多样性与文化多样性水平在统计学上并无显著差异，但二者的民族语言与文化多样性重叠程度，恰恰是解释为何族群政治组织仅出现在贝宁而非塞内加尔的首要动因。本研究可为解答“为何族群政治仅在部分族裔多元的社会中出现，而非所有族裔多元场景”这一宏观学术议题提供理论借鉴。