• When and why do political elites choose to form governmental coalitions in ethnically or economically severely divided societies?

• How can coalitions of pro-democratic elites successfully fend off challenges by anti-democratic actors, and thus repel dangers to democracy itself?

• What is the effect of economic inequalities between groups on the risk of civil war?

• What can politicians and civil society representatives do to reduce tensions between ethnically or economically defined groups.

The focus of the DANGER project is to study the danger of political violence for the survival of democracy in a new European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project. It explores the response of pro-democracy elites to violent threats by anti-democratic actors in the interwar period (1919-1939). Specifically the project is asked whether governing coalitions between pro-democrats have a better track record than coalitions between pro-democratic and anti-democratic parties in fending off political violence. To do so, the Chair employs statistical models, new machine learning techniques, and insights from archival sources. It is assumed that the best comparison case for contemporary European democracies are past European democracies, and will compare the insights of the Chair from historical cases to current developments to make predictions about future threats to European democracies.

Why do political elites from different ethnic groups share power in government coalitions? And when do such multiethnic coalitions prevent political violence? Answering these questions is of great importance for the stability of states around the world. We investigate the origins of ethnic power sharing using both global datasets and case studies. Our research shows that shared identity markers and formal institutions play an important role in bringing about multiethnic government coalitions. These results have been published  in the Journal of Politics and the American Journal of Political Science. Insights from ongoing research can be found here and here. In the Journal of Conflict Resolution we investigate the role of identity markers such as language and religion in the outbreak of intrastate armed conflicts.

Globally, demands for self-determination by ethnic groups are the most common issue in civil wars since 1945.  In this research project, we investigate when and why secessionist conflicts trigger additional non-violent and violent armed conflicts within the same country. Our central assumption is that political representatives of some ethnic groups learn from interactions between a government and other ethnic groups that seek self-determination. When governments grant concessions suchas regional autonomy to violent challengers, other ethnic groups in the same country may interpret such concessions as a reward for violence, and also rebel. Yet government attempts to fight self-determination challengers can also lead to a diffusion of armed conflicts in the same state. The results from our research have been published in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, and Political Analysis.

While inequality between individuals is a widely studied topic, economists and political scientists have paid less attention to economic differences between ethnic groups – so-called horizontal inequality. In joint work with scholars from ETH Zürich and the University of Konstanz, we construct new measures of horizontal inequality on the basis of geographically coded measures of economic output, night lights emissions, and survey data. Our research on the effects of inequality on the risk of ethnic civil war has appeared in the Journal of Peace Research. We explore and explain global trends in horizontal inequality in an article published by the journal International Organization.