Original scientific paper
TESTING THE THEORIES OF ETHNIC CONFLICT: OCCAM'S RAZOR AND THE CASE OF CROATIA
Aleksandar Štulhofer
; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb
Abstract
Ethnic conflicts in Croatia 1990-91- the prelude to the full scale war
- are analysed within four different theoretical perspectives; the
diffusion model, the ethnocultural model, the reactive ethnicity model,
and the competition model are discussed. Resultssuggest that only
the last one, portreyed as the rational choice approach to (ethnic)
solidarity formation and collective action, succedes in explaining the
events in question. Unfalsifiability, "incompleteness", and empirical
falsification represent,successively, the seriousflaws in other models.
Finally, some social policy implications of the rational choice
approach to ethnicity are sketched.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
32533
URI
Publication date:
1.3.1993.
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