Matthias Basedau

• PhD
• Managing Director at German Institute for Global and Area Studies

To what extent do minority grievances contribute to intrastate conflict? Against the backdrop of rising discrimination against religious minorities worldwide, Religious Minorities at Risk offers new insights into classic debates on the influences of discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) on minority grievances and conflict behavior. It d...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

Religious Minorities at Risk examines the conflict behavior of 771 religious minorities in 183 countries between 2000 and 2014. Using detailed data for each minority, we demonstrate that discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) cause minorities to form grievances which, in turn, influence their conflict behavior including protest, rioting,...

This article adds to a growing literature explaining driving forces behind Muslim foreign fighters in Jihadist conflicts. Employing quantitative analyses, we examine counts of Muslim foreign fighters from non-Muslim majority countries in Iraq and Syria from 2011 to 2015. We find that greater numbers of foreign fighters come from countries where Mus...

Ideology may directly provide motive and indirectly capacity for collective violence, thus making armed conflicts longer and bloodier. We investigate these propositions by drawing on an innovative global dataset which codes ideological claims by rebel groups and governments in intrastate armed conflicts since 1946. Results demonstrate that although...

Religion has become increasingly contentious in recent years. Faith-based discrimination, hostility and violence seem to have increased worldwide. But how can faith lead to conflict? In this article, we test the impact of two important dimensions of religion that have been neglected in previous research: the belief in ‘one true religion’ and percep...

In spring 2020, observers and practitioners warned that COVID-19 would increase violence in sub-Saharan Africa by creating an economic shock that would lead to distributional conflicts and government repression. Compared to before the pandemic, violence did increase in 2020, rising by 40 and 60 per cent in terms of fatalities and events, respective...

This article takes stock of the state of African Studies and argues that (1) research on Africa is strongly dominated by outside, non-African, mostly Western views; (2) there is a tendency towards undifferentiated views on “Africa,” which usually concentrate on negative aspects, overlooking progress in many areas; (3) methodologies that focus on ca...

As dynamics are still unfolding and even sophisticated forecasting cannot sufficiently model the effects of an unprecedented crisis, reliably predicting the political impact in Africa and elsewhere remains a difficult task. However, it is possible to outline the main variables that will determine which conflict scenarios are likely to materialise a...

Natural resources can create state-based and other conflicts through several causal mechanisms. Debate, however, has remained silent on forms of conflict, especially why violent or peaceful collective action occurs. Combining the literatures on nonviolent- and armed conflict with work on the resource–conflict link, we developed a number of hypothes...

Religion has been taking an increasingly contentious character worldwide. Deprivation, grievances and protest by religious groups seems to be on the rise. Previous research has shown that the marginalization of ethnic groups can contribute significantly to violent conflict. However, we know little about religious groups as existing research has lac...

Contrary to the expectations of secularization theory, religion remains socially important and affects politics in multiple ways—especially regarding conflict between religious communities. Theoretically, religion can increase altruism, but belief in the superiority of one's faith may facilitate intergroup discrimination and related conflict. Previ...

This article presents ViEWS-a political violence early-warning system that seeks to be maximally transparent, publicly available, and have uniform coverage, and sketches the methodological innovations required to achieve these objectives. ViEWS produces monthly forecasts at the country and subnational level for 36 months into the future and all thr...

Relative deprivation theory suggests that discrimination increases the risk of violence. While religious armed conflicts have been increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, effects of religious discrimination have rarely been investigated. Using the new Religion and State dataset and other sources, this contribution investigates this question in a two-leve...

Religion plays a fundamental role in most people's lives with profound implications for socioeconomic development. This survey provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the causal mechanisms between religion and development discussed and tested in the economics literature, and reviews quantitative empirical evidence on the actual effects...

In recent years, many oil finds were made along the shores of Africa, often triggering high hopes. But do expectations of the consequences of oil discoveries affect subsequent conflict? A number of arguments back this idea. Relative deprivation theory suggests that oil discoveries raise hopes of windfalls, which if not fulfilled, result in frustrat...

Since Ted Gurr’s Why Men Rebel it has become conventional wisdom that (relative) deprivation creates grievances and that these grievances in turn lead to intergroup violence. Recently, studies have yielded evidence that the exclusion of ethnic groups is a substantial conflict risk. From a theoretical angle, the relationship is straightforward and i...

Anecdotal evidence from many armed conflicts suggests that religion incites violence. Theoretically speaking, several facets of religion can create motives and opportunities to overcome the collective action problems associated with organized violence. However, empirical research has hitherto found no conclusive answer on the extent to which religi...

Despite ample anecdotal evidence, previous research on violent conflict has found little evidence that religion is an important factor in organized violence. Quantitative work in this area has been largely confined to the interreligious character of conflict and measures of religious diversity, and has strongly neglected the peace aspect of religio...

Religion has increasingly become important in conflicts worldwide. Religious leaders may play a key role in mobilizing believers as they can call for peace or instigate violence. But what makes religious leaders support peace or promote violence? Drawing on a survey poll of 102 religious leaders in Juba, South Sudan, this paper represents virtually...

Building on theoretical insights from research on the rentier state and the “resource curse,” several studies have supported the argument that oil hinders democracy. However, previous research on the rentier state has neglected the global surge of multiparty autocracies or “electoral authoritarian” regimes since the end of the Cold War. No systemat...

According to quantitative studies, oil seems the only natural resource that is robustly linked to civil war onset. However, recent debates on the nexus of oil and internal conflict have neglected the fact that there are a number of peaceful rentier oil states in existence. Few efforts have been made to explain why some oil-exporting countries have...

Thus far, researchers working on ethnicity and resources as determinants of civil conflict have operated largely independently of each other. While there is plenty of evidence that natural resources may spur armed conflict, empirical evidence for the nexus between ethnic fractionalization and conflict remains inconclusive. Some authors conclude tha...

This article employs an innovative methodology to study causal mechanisms in the oil–conflict link by combining a systematic approach with taking into account country details. Engaging in a deductive test of causal mechanisms in a controlled comparison of four major oil exporters, results show that no oil-related causal mechanism can fully explain...

In this article we investigate whether natural resource endowments, specifically oil and gas, and the political status of ethnic groups interact to increase or decrease armed conflict risk. We argue that political exclusion of ethnic groups should amplify, while monopoly power of ethnic groups should reverse the effects of oil and gas on conflict,...

Given its religious demography, sub-Saharan Africa seems particularly prone to the outbreak of violent clashes between Christians and Muslims. This article compares three sub-Saharan countries—Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania—that display different levels of inter-religious violence despite each having in common similar population ratios of Chr...

In theory, formal state institutions can be designed in order to manage ethnic and other conflict in divided societies. However, quantitative empirical research has found mixed evidence that institutional engineering generally works. This paper argues that this is because most studies have neglected that the success of institutional engineering may...

We employ a two‐tier spatiotemporal analysis to investigate whether uranium operations cause armed conflict in Africa. The macrolevel analysis suggests that – compared to the baseline conflict risk – uranium ventures increase the risk of intrastate conflict by 10 percent. However, we find ethnic exclusion to be a much better predictor of armed conf...

Though African party systems are said to be ethnic, there is little evidence for this claim. The few empirical studies rarely rely on individual data and are biased in favour of Anglophone Africa. This paper looks at four Francophone countries, drawing on representative survey polls. Results reveal that ethnicity matters, but that its impact is gen...

Matthias Basedau und Sebastian Elischer, Return to the Barracks? Authoritarian Rule in Sub-saharan Africa, pp. 354-383. Despite a decline in military interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, there are sufficient indications of a connection between the influence of the military and the stabilization of autocratic rule. Due to a scholarly neglect of the...

Theoretically, the ‘‘mobilization hypothesis’’ establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that particular religious structures are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes more likely. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African...

Causal mechanisms and related contextual variables are crucial to the study of the resource-conflict link, but little systematic research has been done on their exact functioning. This paper contributes to the filling of this gap by comparing four major oil exporters (Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, and Venezuela) with differing levels of internal violence...

The debate on institutional engineering offers options to manage ethnic and other conflicts. This contribution systematically assesses the logic of these institutional designs and the empirical evidence on their functioning. Generally, institutions can work on ethnic conflict by either accommodating (“consociationalists”) or denying (“integrationis...

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that religious structures such as overlapping ethnic and religious identities are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes likelier. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub‐Saharan Africa and the religi...

Recent research has questioned the notion that ethnicity is the main determinant of party preference in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on data from representative survey polls in eight anglophone and francophone sub-Saharan countries, multinomial and binary logit regressions confirm that ethnicity counts but does not explain party preference as a whol...

Since the sweeping (re)introduction of multiparty systems in the early 1990s, almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced legal provisions to ban ethnic or other identity-based particularistic parties. Altogether, 12 countries have actually banned political parties on these grounds. In theoretical terms, such bans can exclude particularism fro...

Despite the religious diversity in sub‐Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, social science research has inadequately addressed the question of how and to what extent religion matters for conflict in Africa. This paper presents an innovative data inventory on religion and violent conflict in all sub‐Saharan co...

According to quantitative studies, oil is the only resource that is robustly linked to civil war onset. However, recent debates on the nexus of oil and civil war have neglected that there are a number of peaceful oil‐rentier states, and few efforts have been spent to explain why some oil-exporting countries have experienced civil war and others hav...

According to the functionalist argument, party systems that show moderate fragmentation, high institutionalization and rather low polarization are more conducive to democracy than others. This hypothesis is systematically tested in four country cases in Francophone West Africa that share many historical, social and economic characteristics but diff...

During the 1990s the number of African states allowing multiparty elections increased dramatically. Paradoxically, this has been accompanied in the majority of countries by legal bans on ethnic and other particularistic parties. The main official reason has been the aim of preventing the politicization of ethnicity as this is feared to lead to ethn...

Following the introduction of multiparty systems, almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced wide-ranging measures of party regulation, particularly bans on ethnic or – in more general terms – particularistic parties, in order, it is claimed, to prevent intercommunal conflict and to promote democracy. While this restrictive type of party regu...

Am 13. September 2010 gab die britische Erdöl-und Gasfördergesellschaft Tullow Oil ei-nen weiteren bedeutenden Ölfund vor der ghanaischen Küste bekannt sowie die Auswei-tung von Explorationsprojekten im Ostafrikanischen Graben nach Kenia und Äthiopien. Analyse In den letzten Jahren hat es im subsaharischen Afrika vermehrt Erdölfunde gegeben. Die zu...

Eine Reihe von Regimen wie Iran, Kuba, Myanmar oder Nordkorea ist seit langem von den USA, der EU oder den Vereinten Nationen mit Sanktionen belegt. Diese unterscheiden sich hinsichtlich ihrer Ziele und darin, ob sie „umfassend“ oder „zielgerichtet“ sind. Eines haben die Sanktionen jedoch gemeinsam: Sie sollen eine Änderung des politischen Verhalte...

The 'resource curse' hypothesis claims that abundance in natural resources, particularly oil, encourages especially civil war. Natural resources provide both motive and opportunity for conflict and create indirect institutional and economic causes of instability. Contrarily, the theory of the rentier state - largely neglected in the study of peace...

Una investigación reciente ha incrementado el cuestionamiento sobre el vínculo entre los recursos naturales y el conflicto violento, haciendo énfasis en la importancia de las condiciones de contexto específicas a los recursos bajo las cuales se vuelven más probables los conflictos internos. Este trabajo se dedica a hacer un análisis sistemático de...

Una investigación reciente ha incrementado el cuestionamiento sobre el vínculo entre los recursos naturales y el conflicto violento, haciendo énfasis en la importancia de las condiciones de contexto específicas a los recursos bajo las cuales se vuelven más probables los conflictos internos. Este trabajo se dedica a hacer un análisis sistemático de...

Peace research has been hesitant to systematically investigate the role of religion in sub-Saharan violent conflicts. The comparison of Benin and the Ivory Coast - two cases that show a similar profile in terms of religious demography and non-religious risk factors but differ with regard to conflict - reveals that non religious factors are superior...

Despite earlier assumptions that ethnicity is a central feature of African party systems, there is little substantial evidence for this claim. The few studies with an empirical foundation rarely rely on individual data and are biased in favor of Anglophone Africa. This paper looks at four Francophone countries, drawing on four representative survey...

Recent research has increasingly questioned the link between natural resources and violent conflict while stressing the importance of resource-specific context conditions under which internal conflicts become more likely. This paper engages in a systematic analysis of six of these resource-specific conditions comparing 15 African oil and diamond pr...

Starting from controversial findings about the relationship between party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation, this article argues that problems can only be properly addressed on the basis of a differentiated typology of party systems. Contradictory research results do not pose an 'African puzzle' but can be explained by different...

Given the widespread focus on socioeconomic factors, it comes as no surprise that religion is neglected in most theoretical explanations of African civil conflicts. While scholarly interest is increasing in light of the civil wars in Sudan, Nigeria, and northern Uganda, no systematic empirical analysis has been undertaken to date. Hence, this paper...

Since the sweeping (re)introduction of multiparty systems in the early 1990s almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced bans on ethnic or – in more general terms – particularistic parties. Such party bans have been neglected in research, and this paper engages in a preliminary analysis of their effects on democracy and peace. Theoretically, p...

The institutionalization of political parties is said to be important for democratic development, but its measurement has remained a neglected area of research. We understand the institutionalization of political organizations as progress in four dimensions: roots in society, level of organization, autonomy, and coherence. On this basis we construc...

Contributions to this edited volume examine African parties and party systems with ther particular features of weak organisation, informal relationships dominated by big men and clientelism within a neopatrimonal setting. Others raise crucial question of representation in relation to ethnicity, civil society and gender or deal with the area of elec...

The wave of democratization that has engulfed African countries since the 1980s has been characterized by the establishment of or return to multi-party politics. This has mostly happened in political systems with a long history of de facto and de jure constraints on the ability of political parties to function effectively. While few countries today...

This article provides an introduction to recent debates on area studies and its less well-known ‘cousin’ comparative area studies. Though written from a political science angle, many of the aspects covered in the article equally apply to other disciplines. We begin by noting the developments and debates that have accompanied area studies since the...

In this paper we provide an introduction to recent debates on area studies and its less well-known cousin comparative area studies. We begin by noting some of the developments and debates that have surrounded area studies since the end of the Cold War. In section two of the paper we highlight some contemporary understandings of area studies and pre...

Starting from controversial findings about the relationship between party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation, this article argues that problems can only be properly addressed on the basis of a differentiated typology of party systems. Contradictory research results do not pose an 'African puzzle' but can be explained by different...

Politische Parteien bestehen aus Individuen und Gruppen, die um Einfluss und Kontrolle konkurrieren. Häufig bilden sich innerparteiliche Machtgruppen, so genannte Faktionen. In diesem Band werden Ursachen, Charakteristika und Bedeutung von Faktionen in Parteien in Deutschland (Grüne und CDU), in Europa, Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika untersucht. D...

Resource curse theory claims that resource abundance encourages violent conflict. A study of 37 oil-producing developing countries, however, reveals that oil states with very high levels of oil revenue are remarkably stable. An analysis of the ways in which governments spend oil revenues identifies two distinct types of rentier systems – the large-...

Factionalism can affect the stability and institutionalization of parties and party systems and it can impact on the efficiency and legitimacy of political parties and political systems as a whole. Nevertheless, factionalism has only received scant attention in the comparative literature on political parties. As this paper shows, there is no dearth...

Natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from a bad reputation. Oil and diamonds, particularly, have been blamed for a number of Africa’s illnesses such as poverty, corruption, dictatorship and war. This paper outlines the different areas and transmission channels of how this so-called “resource curse” is said to materialize. By assessing emp...

Entgegen der ersten Annahmen lassen sich tatsächlich einige Variablenausprägungen bzw. Bedingungen identifizieren, die jeweils für sich genommen eine conditio sine qua non für den Erfolg der Demokratie bei den Untersuchungsfälle darstellen. Dazu gehören: Ein Mindestmaß an demokratischer Integrität der (regierenden) Eliten: Ohne die Akzeptanz von Mi...

Jedes Untersuchungsdesign sollte eng an die Erfordernisse des konkreten Erkenntnisinteresses angebunden werden. Daher gilt es zunächst die Setzung von abhängiger und unabhängigen Variablen vorzunehmen. Diese Zuordnung des Status von unabhängigen und abhängiger Variable(n) — stets abhängig vom Erkenntnisinteresse des Forschers (vgl. Sartori 1991: 25...

Der erste Imperativ der theoretischen demokratieätiologischen Reflexion und Begutachtung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes für die konkrete Kausalanalyse besteht nun darin, die genannten zahlreichen Einflussfaktoren möglichst vollständig in die simultante Prüfung einbeziehen, wobei besonders afrikaspezifische Variablen wie z.B. Ethnizität oder Neopat...

Die Beschäftigung mit der Variable „Institutionen“ setzt eine Begriffsklärung voraus, da tatsächlich kontrastierende Verständnisse bestehen. Dabei soll in diesem Kontext einem engeren Institutionenkonzept (vgl. Merkel/ Sandschneider/ Segert 1996: 10ff) der Vorzug gegeben werden, das Organisationen wie Verbände, Kirchen und Parteien etc. (zunächst)...

Für eine Typologisierung können natürlich eine Reihe von Merkmalen berücksichtigt werden: Im Grunde alle, welche Teil der Untersuchung waren. Aber sicherlich erscheinen in dieser Hinsicht einerseits die Demokratieentwicklung bzw. der Status im Untersuchungssample und die als wichtigste Erklärungsfaktoren identifizierten Merkmale andererseits releva...

Bei der Würdigung zahlreicher Variablen des primären Beobachtungszeitraums wurde bereits, wenn es sich anbot, eine diachrone Perspektive eingenommen. Insofern behandeln die nächsten Kapitel besondere historische Merkmale, die über diese diachrone Betrachtungen hinausblicken. Begonnen werden soll dabei mit der Periode vor der Kolonialisierung des Ko...

Das diffuse Konzept „Demokratie“, von vielen ohne definitorische Präzision gebraucht und in Anspruch genommen, stellt in diesem Rahmen das zentrale Konzept der Untersuchung bzw. der abhängigen Variable dar. Eine besondere Schwierigkeit besteht darin, dass es sich bei dem Begriff „Demokratie“ um ein normativ äußerst aufgeladenes Konzept handelt. Die...

Diese demokratieätiologischen und kausaltheoretisch bzw. methodologischen Überlegungen fuhren zu einer Präzisierung der Fragestellung in Form eines Fragenkatalogs, der folgendermaßen formuliert werden kann: Gibt es Faktoren, die als notwendig oder hinreichend hinsichtlich der Demokratieentwicklung für die Untersuchungsfalle bezeichnet werden können...

Die vorliegende Untersuchung sah sich in vielen Bereichen mit erheblichen Datenproblemen konfrontiert, die freilich für die afrikanistische Politikwissenschaft typisch sind. Dementsprechend ist zu wünschen, dass diese Bereiche verstärkt Gegenstand der Forschung werden: Dazu gehören v.a. zuerst einmal durchaus deskriptive Erhebungen zur sozialen Ung...