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Cultural Pluralism, Modernization, and Conflict: An Empirical Analysis of Sources of Political Instability in African Nations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

D. G. Morrison  and
H. M. Stevenson
D. G. Morrison
Affiliation:
University of Ibadan
H. M. Stevenson
Affiliation:
York University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 82 - 103
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1972

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References

1 Representative work includes: Bwy, D. P., “Political Instability in Latin America: The Cross-Cultural Test of a Causal Model,” Latin American Research Review, III (Summer 1968), 17–66Google Scholar; Davies, James C., “Political Stability and Instability: Some Manifestations and Causes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XIII (March 1969), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duff, A. and McCamant, John F., “Measuring Social and Political Requirements for System Stability in Latin America,” American Political Science Review, LXII (Dec. 1968), 1125–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eckstein, Harry, ed., Internal War: Problems and Approaches (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Ivo, K. and Feierabend, Rosalind L., “Aggressive Behaviors within Polities, 1948–1962,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (Sept. 1966), 249–71Google Scholar; Fossum, Egil, “Factors Influencing the Occurrence of Military Coups D'Etat in Latin America,” Journal of Peace Research, III (1967), 228–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurr, Ted, “A Causal Model of Civil Strife: A Comparative Analysis Using New Indices,” American Political Science Review, LXVII (Dec. 1968), 1104–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurr, , Why Men Rebel (Princeton, 1970)Google Scholar; Graham, Hugh Davies and Gurr, Ted, eds., The History of Violence in America (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Midlarsky, Manus and Tanter, Raymond, “Toward a Theory of Political Instability in Latin America,” Journal of Peace Research, III (1967), 209–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rummel, Rudolph J., “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within and between Nations,” Journal Systems Yearbook, VIII (1963), 1–50Google Scholar; Rummel, , “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within Nations, 1946–59,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (March 1966), 65–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tanter, Raymond, “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within and between Nations, 1958–60,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (March 1966), 41–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsurutani, Taketsugu, “Stability and Instability: A Note in Comparative Political Analysis,” Journal of Politics, XXX (Nov. 1968), 910–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Zolberg, Aristide, “The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Tropical Africa,” American Political Science Review, LXII (March 1968), 70–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also the review of the literature in Bienen, Henry, Violence and Social Change (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Feierabend, “Aggressive Behaviors within Polities.”

3 Gurr, “A Causal Model of Civil Strife,” and Why Men Rebel.

4 Bwy, “Political Instability in Latin America.”

5 Midlarsky and Tanter, “Toward a Theory of Political Instability.”

6 Cf. Feit, Edward, “Military Coups and Political Development: Some Lessons from Ghana and Nigeria,” World Politics, XX (Jan. 1968), 179–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'connell, J., “The Inevitability of Instability,” Journal of Modern African Studies, V (March 1967), 181–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zolberg, , “The Structure of Political Conflict,” and “Military Intervention in the New States of Tropical Africa: Elements of a Comparative Analysis,” in Bienen, Henry, ed., The Military Intervenes (New York, 1968), 71–98.Google Scholar

7 See Zolberg, Aristide, Creating Political Order (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar

8 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn., 1968), 47.Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, LV (Sept. 1961), 493–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, C. E., The Dynamics of Modernization (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966)Google Scholar; Olsen, Mancur Jr., “Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force,” Journal of Economic History, XXIII (Dec. 1963), 529–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ivo K. and Rosalind L. Feierabend, and Betty Nesvold, “Social Change and Political Violence,” in Graham and Gurr, The History of Violence in America, 632–87; and Nelson, Robert and Wolpe, Howard, “Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspective,” American Political Science Review, LXIV (Dec. 1970), 1112–30.Google Scholar

10 The nations compared are Burundi, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Dahomey, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Upper Volta, Zaire and Zambia. The data used in the paper have been collected by the African National Integration Project, and most of the data are presented in Donald G. Morrison, Robert C. Mitchell, John N. Paden, and Hugh

Stevenson, M., Black Africa: A Handbook for Comparative Analysis (New York, 1972).Google Scholar Data not referenced in that volume but included in the present analysis are available in machine-readable code books and data decks that can be obtained from the authors.

11 Compare the definition of violence in Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar

12 Eckstein, Internal War.

13 Rummel, “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior.”

14 Gurr, “A Causal Model of Civil Strife.”

15 Rummel, for example, finds three factors, which he labels “revolution,” “subversion,” and “turmoil.” Gurr has used these results to develop original codes for civil strife events, but he makes the more appropriate distinctions between “conspiracy,” “internal war,” and “turmoil.” Tanter has isolated only two dimensions which he labels “internal war” and “turmoil” and Bwy finds three dimensions, one of which he is unable to label, and two which he labels “organized violence” and “anomic violence.”

16 Eckstein, Harry, “On the Etiology of Internal War,” History and Theory, IV (1965), 135.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 Calvert, P. A. R., “Revolution: The Politics of Violence,” Political Studies, XV (1967), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 This typology is comparable to that sketched in Rosenau, James N., “Internal War as an International Event,” in Rosenau, , ed., Internal Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton, 1964), 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rosenau distinguishes between personnel, authority, and structural wars as types of civil strife.

20 We give a lengthy explanation of this assumption in chap. 2 of Donald G. Morrison and Hugh M. Stevenson, Conflict and Change in African Political Development (New York, forthcoming).

21 Compare the very similar definitions of conflict in the following: Bernard, Jessie, “Parties and Issues in Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, II (June 1958), 111–21Google Scholar; Kenneth E. Boulding, “Organizations and Conflict,” ibid., 122–34; Dahrendorf, Ralph, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959)Google Scholar; Galtung, Johan, “Institutionalized Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Peace Research, IV (1965), 348–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also, the summaries of the literature and the definitions of conflict in: Aubert, Vilhelm, “Competition and Dissensus: Two Types of Conflict and Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, VII (March 1963), 26–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fink, Clinton F., “Some Conceptual Difficulties in the Theory of Social Conflict,” ibid., XII (Dec. 1968), 412–60Google Scholar; Mack, Raymond W. and Snyder, Richard C., “The Analysis of Social Conflict – Toward an Overview and Synthesis,” ibid., I (June 1957), 212–47Google Scholar; Bergstrom, Lars, “What Is a Conflict of Interest?” Journal of Peace Research, III (1970), 197–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 See the classic statement in Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar, and the summary of Furnivall's thought in Rex, John, “The Plural Society in Sociological Theory,” British Journal of Sociology, x (1959).Google Scholar

23 “Social and Cultural Pluralism,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, LXXXIII (Jan. 1960), 763–77.

24 Cultural Pluralism and Nationalist Politics in British Guyana (Chicago, 1967). “The distinction between maximal and minimal cultural sections (and between the plural and heterogenous society) may be illustrated by comparing for example the United States and Nigeria. The United States is a heterogenous society. It contains within it many cultural groups that are integrated at local levels (e.g., the Irish, the Polish, the French Canadians, etc.). We usually think of these as ethnic groups. There are practically no institutional structures (e.g., labour unions, political parties, religious associations, etc.) that serve to integrate each of the groups separately at the national level of social cultural integration. In Nigeria, on the other hand, the Ibo, the Yoruba, and the Hausa are not only culturally differentiated and locally integrated, but institutional structures exist (e.g., political parties) which serve to maintain their cultural differentiation at the national level. Compared to the United States, Nigeria is a plural society” (p. 22).

25 Towards a Sociology for Africa,” Social Forces, XLIII (Oct. 1964), 11–18.

26 This distinguishes this conceptualization of cultural pluralism from that used by those who see cultural pluralism as characteristic only of societies in which institutionally and culturally segmented groups are encapsulated in a single political system where one of the groups – usually an alien group – exercises a monopoly of political power. See Smith, , “Social and Cultural Pluralism,” and the contributions by Smith, and Leo, Kuper in Kuper, and Smith, , eds., Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley, 1969).Google Scholar

27 See Murdock, George P., Africa: Its People and Their Culture History (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

28 Cf. the articles in Helm, June, ed., Essays on the Problem of Tribe (Seattle, 1968)Google Scholar; Fried, Morton H., The Evolution of Political Society (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; and the contributions in Journal of Asian and African Studies, V (Jan. and April 1970), ed. Gutkind, P. C. W..Google Scholar

29 See Naroll, Raoul, “The Culture Bearing Unit in Cross-Cultural Surveys,” in Naroll, and Cohen, Ronald, eds., Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology (New York, 1970), 721–65.Google Scholar

30 Compare the following definition: “An ethnic group consists of those who conceive of themselves as being alike by virtue of their common ancestry, real or fictitious, and who are so regarded by others.” Shibutani, Tamotsu and Kwan, Kian N., Ethnic Stratification: A Comparative Approach (New York, 1965), 47.Google Scholar

31 What is established is that the ethnic identities of individuals vary in different sociological and geographical situations, and that ethnic groups have historically incorporated new values and populations over time. See Paden, J. N., Kaufert, Joe, Ford, Mike, and Larimore, Gene, “Situational Ethnicity in Africa,” a paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1968Google Scholar; and, for a discussion of incorporation processes in various African ethnic groups, Cohen, Ronald and Middleton, John, eds., From Tribe to Nation (Scranton, Penn., 1970).Google Scholar

32 It is of course clear that variation in cultural characteristics does not necessarily indicate logical incompatability or mutual exclusiveness in the relationship between the values of different ethnic units, but the measures of culture traits that we have used are based on differences in social organization that are probably mutually exclusive, at least as options for national policy.

33 For a discussion of the early socialization hypothesis as it applies to the resilience of traditional culture, see Bruner, Edward M., “Cultural Transmission and Cultural Change,” Southeastern Journal of Anthropology, XII (Summer 1956), 191–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Cf. the definition in Feldman, Arnold S. and Hurn, Christopher, “The Experience of Modernization,” Sociometry, XXIX (Dec. 1966).Google Scholar

35 See, particularly, Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” and Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. One aspect of modernization, excluded by our narrow identification of the concept in this paper, is the process of national integration. We have, however, analysed the relationship between national integration and political instability in our article, “Integration and Instability: Patterns of African Political Development,” American Political Science Review (forthcoming Sept. 1972).

36 See the informative discussion of the development and application of the theory of cultural pluralism, in Fortes, Meyer, “The Plural Society in Africa,” The Alfred and Winnifred Hoernle Memorial Lecture, 1968 (Johannesburg, 1970).Google Scholar

37 For a summary of these first two arguments, see the Feierabends and Nesvold, “Social Change and Political Violence.”

38 Cf. the discussions in J. C. Mitchell, “Tribalism and the Plural Society,” Inaugural Lecture, University College of Nyasaland and Rhodesia, Salisbury; Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Geertz, , ed., Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, Ill., 1963)Google Scholar; and Nelson and Wolpe, “Modernization and the Politics of Communalism.”

39 Cf., for example, the arguments in Ward, Robert E., “Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan,” World Politics, XV (1963), 569–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar; and Guetzkow, Harold, Multiple Loyalties: A Theoretical Approach to a Problem in International Relations (Princeton, 1957).Google Scholar

40 See Oberschall, Anthony R., “Rising Expectations and Political Turmoil,” Journal of Development Studies, VI (Oct. 1969), 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Voluntary Associations,” in Coleman, J. S. and Rosberg, C. G., eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, 1964), 318–39.Google Scholar

42 Cohen, Abner, Customs and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants (Berkeley, 1969).Google Scholar

43 Epstein, A. L., Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester, 1958)Google Scholar; Gluckman, Max, “Tribalism in Modern British Central Africa,” in Wallerstein, Immanuel, ed., The Colonial Situation (New York, 1966), 251–64Google Scholar; Bates, Robert H., “Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, X (1970), 546–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 A discussion of the importance of multiple operationalizations of single concepts in crossnational analysis, and the need for “converging” rather than “statistically significant” results, is contained in Morrison and Stevenson, Conflict and Change in African Political Development, chap. 4.

45 See the chapter, “On Ethnic Unit Classification,” in Morrison et al., Black Africa.

46 Ethnographic Atlas (Pittsburgh, 1967).

47 For the description of ethnic units by nations, see Morrison et al., Black Africa, Part II, where each ethnic unit is named and described in terms of its constituent named groups, population size, and general geographical location.

48 The data on the cultural characteristics of each ethnic unit are contained in a machine-readable data file, containing a code book describing each variable, and a deck giving the codings for each unit on each variable in the location specified in the code book. The Ethnic Data File of the African National Integration Project is available through the Institute for Behavioural Research Data Bank at York University.

49 In what follows we describe the use of factor analysis for this purpose. The logic of this procedure is adopted from the psychometric tradition of attitudinal scaling: see the classic discussion in Torgenson, W., Theory and Methods of Scaling (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, and B. Rutherford, D. T. Campbell, D. G. Morrison, Measurement Models in the Social Sciences (forthcoming). The factor analysis reported here was carried out using the computer program MESA1, which was originally written by Clarence Bradford of the University of Chicago. The program, as now available from the Methods and Analysis Section of the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University, incorporates a principal components factor extraction routine. We use 1.00 as the communality estimates in the diagonal of the correlation matrix, and the criterion for the number of factors used in rotation is based on an examination of discontinuities in the size of the eigenvalues, following Linn, Robert L., “A Monte Carlo Approach to the Number of Factors Problems,” Psychometrika, XXXII (March 1968), 37–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The algorithm employed in the computation of factor scores is based on the formula derived in Ryder, Robert G., “Scoring Orthogonally Rotated Factors,” Psychological Reports, XVI (1965), 701–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 See the argument in Kloss, Heinz, “Notes Concerning a Language-Nation Typology,” in Fishman, Joshua, Ferguson, Charles, and Gupta, Jyotirindara Das, eds., Language Problems of Developing Nations (New York, 1968), esp. p. 75.Google Scholar It should be noticed, however, that the evidence for the relationship between linguistic similarity and mutual intelligibility is not at all to be taken for granted, as is pointed out in Wolff, Hans, “Intelligibility and Inter-Ethnic Attitudes,” Anthropological Linguistics, I (1959), 34–41.Google Scholar Furthermore, there are persuasive arguments to the effect that linguistic pluralism may produce peculiarly integrative rather than destabilizing conflicts in political systems. Cf. Inglehart, Ronald F. and Woodward, Margaret, “Language Conflicts and Political Community,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (Oct. 1967), 27–45Google Scholar, and Gupta, Jyotirindara Das, Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley, 1970).Google Scholar

51 The data for each of these measures are given in Morrison et al., Black Africa, chap. 2.

52 We are grateful to Mr Larry Nwakwesi of McGill University for reminding us that ethnic identities may also be contingent on the definitions of élites who wish to mobilize constituencies in support of their own political and economic ambition. In this way, communal instability may be contingent on élite competition and conflict rather than on conflict between culturally distinctive groupings in the national population, and élite conflict may be better discussed in terms of competition for the same resources as opposed to conflict over values inherited from culturally distinctive ethnic groups. We do not, however, consider these plausible rival hypotheses as being either mutually exclusive to the hypotheses analysed in this paper, or to be taken a priori as being of superior explanatory power.

53 Most of the data are available and documented in Morrison et al., Black Africa. All of the data are available in the Machine Readable Data Bank of the African National Integration Project, where they are fully documented.

54 See our article, “Political Instability in Independent Black Africa: More Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within Nations,” Journal of Conflict Resolutions, XV (Sept. 1971).

55 Morrison et al., Black Africa, chap. 11.

56 Cf. Edinger, Lewis J., “Political Science and Political Biography, I and II: Reflections on the Study of Leadership,” Journal of Politics, XXVI (May and Aug. 1964), 423–79, 648–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Edinger, and Searing, Donald D., “Social Background in Elite Analysis: A Methodological Enquiry,” American Political Science Review, LXI (June 1967), 428–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Cf. Shils, Edward, “Centre and Periphery,” in The Logic of Personal Knowledge (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Ake, Claude, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood, Ill., 1967)Google Scholar, and Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation.

58 These data are available in the Machine Readable Elite File of the African National Integration Project. The data were collected from an extensive search of biographical material in Who's Who, magazine articles, and case studies of national politics, as well as from information supplied by researchers and citizens of different nations. The file includes information on the age, sex, ethnicity, birthplace, education, and occupational background of cabinet members.

59 These variables were selected because of their assumed importance to political conflicts in élite populations. Differences in orientations towards preferable modes of descent, marriage, and traditional economic organization are assumed to be less important than attitudes towards rank and authority in structuring conflicts over how political decisions should be made.

60 We discuss further the implications of temporal inconsistencies in, and imbalances between, different processes of modernization, in chap. 6 of Morrison and Stevenson, Conflict and Change.

61 For details on the methodologies and computation involved in path analysis, see Wright, Sewall, “The Method of Path Coefficients,” Annals of Mathematical Statistics, V (1934), 161–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, , “Path Coefficients and Path Regressions: Alternate or Complementary Concepts,” Biometrics, XVI (June 1960), 189–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duncan, Otis Dudley Jr., “Path Analysis: Sociological Examples,” American Journal of Sociology, LXIII (July 1966), 1–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Land, Kenneth, “Principles of Path Analysis,” in Sociological Methodology, 1969 (San Francisco, 1969)Google Scholar; Boyle, Richard, “Path Analysis and Ordinal Data,” American Journal of Sociology, LXXV (Jan. 1970)Google Scholar; Goldberger, Arthur S., “On Boudon's Method of Linear Causal Analysis,” American Sociological Review, XXXV (Feb. 1970), 97–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 A computer program for calculating path coefficients, standardized partial regression coefficients, and the Z scores of the regression coefficients, has been written by Louis Goodman of the Sociology Department at Yale University, and Donald Morrison. This program was used for computing the results analysed in this paper, and is available through the Methods and Analysis Section of the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University.

63 It is necessary to point out that this “causal model” is designed to evaluate the intervening effects of modernization in the relationship between cultural pluralism and political instability. The model is, however, rather dubiously defined with respect to the causal relationship between cultural pluralism and modernization. The theory we have been investigating does not state that cultural pluralism “causes” either lesser or greater rates of modernization. But it does suggest that cultural pluralism results in or causes peculiar patterns of modernization – that is, ethnic stratification in the distribution of the fruits of modernization – which in turn increase the likelihood of political instability. It is on this basis that we indicate a causal chain from cultural pluralism through modernization to political instability.

64 Cf. Apthorpe, Raymond, “Does Tribalism Really Matter?” Transition, VII (1968), 18–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Magubane, B., “Pluralism and Conflict Situations in Africa: A New Look,” African Social Research, VII (June 1969), 529–54Google Scholar, for arguments against the utility of pluralist explanations of contemporary African politics.