The rational choice approach provides the best tools available for analyzing ethnic group organization and relations. This dissertation applies the strategic interaction logic to modeling interactions at different levels of analysis. At the first level, that of the ordinary individual, it starts out with a discussion of ethnicity as a principle of social organization and as a basis for political mobilization. A second component of the individual level of analysis considers the interactions between political elites and ordinary individuals. In particular, it examines the question of how internal ethnic structures affect political elites' ability to shape ordinary individuals' perceptions of the world around them and of their own group boundaries. Of particular interest at this level of analysis are the conditions under which radical ethnic activists may be able to exert disproportionate influence on ethnic group policies. The next two levels of analysis focus on group-group and group-state interactions. In both of these contexts, group boundaries and preferences are taken as given and ethnic groups and states are treated as unit actors. At the group-group level, the focus is on the strategic interaction between groups living in a single state or empire. At the group-state level, the focus is broadened to consider the influence on intergroup relations in one country of potential intervention by another state. At each one of these levels, the dissertation uses a game theoretic logic and, with one exception, formal models to capture the essence of the interactions imagined. It investigates how factors such as cooperation and commitment problems, incomplete and imperfect information, group heterogeneity, and information asymmetries affect the actors' strategies. The results of these models are illustrated with empirical evidence from various cases and in one instance confronted with data on the 227 ethnic groups in the Minorities at Risk dataset.
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