Editing Civil war (section)

==== Critical Responses to Fearon and Laitin ====
Some scholars, such as [[Lars-Erik Cederman]] of the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the [[Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich|Swiss Federal Institute of Technology]], have criticized the data used by Fearon and Laitin to determine ethnic and religious diversity. In his 2007 paper ''Beyond Fractionalization: Mapping Ethnicity onto Nationalist Insurgencies'', Cederman argues that the [[List of countries ranked by ethnic and cultural diversity level|ethno-linguistic fractionalization index (ELF)]] used by Fearon, Laitin and other political scientists is flawed.<ref name="cambridge.org">{{Cite journal |last1=Cederman |first1=Lars-Erik |last2=Girardin |first2=Luc |date=February 2007 |title=Beyond Fractionalization: Mapping Ethnicity onto Nationalist Insurgencies |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055407070086/type/journal_article |journal=American Political Science Review |language=en |volume=101 |issue=1 |pages=173–185 |doi=10.1017/S0003055407070086 |issn=0003-0554}}</ref> ELF, Cederman states, measures diversity on a country's population-wide level and makes no attempt to determine the number of ethnic groups in relation to what role they play in the power of the state and its military. Cederman believes it makes little sense to test hypotheses relating national ethnic diversity to civil war outbreak without any explicit reference to how many different ethnic groups actually hold power in the state. This suggests that ethnic, linguistic and religious cleavages can matter, depending on the extent to which the various groups have ability and influence to mobilize on either side of a forming conflict.<ref name="cambridge.org"/> Themes explored in Cederman's later work criticizing the use of ethnic fractionalization measures as input variables to predict civil war outbreak relate to these indices not accounting for the geographical distribution of ethnic groups within countries, as this can affect their access to regional resources and commodities, which in turn can lead to conflict.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Cederman |first1=Lars-Erik |last2=Buhaug |first2=Halvard |last3=Rød |first3=Jan Ketil |date=2009-05-27 |title=Ethno-Nationalist Dyads and Civil War |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022002709336455 |journal=Journal of Conflict Resolution |volume=53 |issue=4 |pages=496–525 |doi=10.1177/0022002709336455 |bibcode=2009JConR..53..496C |issn=0022-0027}}</ref> A third theme explored by Cederman is that ethnolinguistic fractionalization does not quantify the extent to which there is pre-existing economic inequality between ethnic groups within countries. In a 2011 article, Cederman and fellow researchers describe finding that “in highly unequal societies, both rich and poor groups fight more often than those groups whose wealth lies closer to the country average”, going against the opportunity-based explanation for civil war outbreak.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=CEDERMAN |first1=LARS-ERIK |last2=WEIDMANN |first2=NILS B. |last3=GLEDITSCH |first3=KRISTIAN SKREDE |date=2011-07-11 |title=Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003055411000207 |journal=American Political Science Review |volume=105 |issue=3 |pages=478–495 |doi=10.1017/s0003055411000207 |issn=0003-0554|hdl=20.500.11850/160115 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

Michael Bleaney, Professor of International Economics at the [[University of Nottingham]], published a 2009 paper titled ''Incidence, Onset and Duration of Civil Wars: A Review of the Evidence'', which tested numerous variables for their relationship to civil war outbreak with different datasets, including that utilized by Fearon and Laitin. Bleaney concluded that neither ethnoreligious diversity, as measured by fractionalization, nor another variable, ethnic polarization, defined as the extent to which individuals in a population are distributed across different ethnic groups, were "a sufficient measure of diversity as it affects the probability of conflict."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bleaney |first=Michael |date=2009 |title=Incidence, onset and duration of civil wars: A review of the evidence |url=https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/65452/1/614243815.pdf |journal=CREDIT Research Paper |volume=09 |issue=8 |pages=29}}</ref>