Measuring Politically-relevant Ientity, With and Without Groups

Abstract

Quantitative scholarship on civil conflict still largely relies upon the ethnic group as the foundation for measures of politically-relevant diversity and, in particular, identity-based political inclusion. However, ethnicity remains notoriously difficult to measure: even cutting-edge analyses are subject to the issues of intra- and inter-ethnic variation in identity salience that plagued earlier work. Here I propose a new way to measure identity-based exclusion. Specifically, I use latent variable models to combine data from both the Ethnic Power Relations Project, which uses the demographic size of politically-relevant ethnic groups to operationalize inclusion; and the Varieties of Democracy Project, which measures overall identity-based inclusion without directly accounting for demographic group size. The latent variable models combine insights from both measurement ap-proaches, ameliorating concerns about using either strategy in isolation. In addition to providing cross-nationally cohesive data on identity-based exclusion for future work, these models provide a framework for scholars to build their own theoretically-driven models of politically-relevant diversity and inclusion.