Understanding Third World Politics

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competition was a major factor in the descent into civil war (Melsom and
Wolpe, 1970).
Ethnic conflict reflects competition between élites for ‘political power,
economic benefits and social status’. In modernizing societies the develop-
ment of ethnic consciousness is heavily dependent upon industrialization,
the spread of literacy, urbanization and the growth of government employ-
ment opportunities, and the new social classes which such developments
produce. This is the way in which conflict between élites precipitates
nationalism – by challenging the distribution of resources and political
power between ethnic groups. According to Brass the potential for national-
ism is not realized ‘until some members from one ethnic group attempt to
move into the economic niches occupied by the rival ethnic group’ (Brass,
1991, p. 47). Secession is a strategy likely only to be adopted when minor-
ity élites have no chance of acquiring economic and political power within
the existing state and when there is a good chance of foreign support.
The bureaucracy can be another arena of ethnic conflict when trained and
educated people from minority groups (‘ambitious and qualified profession-
als’) find themselves excluded from bureaucratic occupations for which they
are qualified as the supply of such professionals outstrips the capacity of
bureaucracies to absorb them. The state bureaucracy can be particularly
discriminatory when the state itself is dominated by a core community.
Separatism provides ‘a new set of avenues to power and privilege for mem-
bers of strata hitherto excluded from a share in both’, especially when the
state in developing countries has boundaries that are recent and artificial, few
constitutional outlets for ‘minority grievances’, a lack of resources for help-
ing poor regions, and a form of government that is prone to discrimination
rather than conciliation (Smith, A. D., 1979, pp. 21–35). Nationalism will be
supported or opposed depending on whether people anticipate greater
wealth, power and prestige from independence, or feel that their welfare
depends on ties with the larger political unit (Hechter, 2000, pp. 117–24).
The case of secession by East Pakistan shows how responses to national-
ist demands for self-determination will depend upon the class interests in
the rest of the country. The landowning class in the West felt threatened by
the Eastern leadership’s proposal to tax hitherto exempt agricultural
incomes in order to provide development capital. The Western bourgeoisie
had an interest in retaining the East as a market for their manufactured
goods and as a source of foreign exchange earnings. At the same time, how-
ever, Western agriculture was becoming an increasingly profitable source of
investment to them, and they were concerned about revolutionary stirrings
in the East. It was mainly the bureaucratic–military oligarchy that opposed


216 Understanding Third World Politics

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