Political Relevance of Identity

What is a politically relevant or salient identity? Why is political relevance important?

In their piece, Cederman, Wimmer, and Min investigate ethnonationalist conflict, and specifically the reasons that ethnic groups rebel. They hypothesize that exclusion from executive power, size of the ethnic group, and experience with prior conflict all increase the likelihood that an ethnic group will rebel in a given year. The results of their study support these hypotheses, especially among ethnic groups that have recently lost power and those that have been actively downtrodden by the state. Unlike other studies, this one considers the political relevance of ethnic groups and recognizes that the state is often not a neutral party to ethnic conflict. 

A politically relevant or salient identity is one that has active political representation. Political relevance is so important because those identities that are politically salient are likely to be the ones that fare the best; people with those salient identities are more likely to be protected from harm, and perhaps given better chances to succeed. Based on the results of the study, ethnic identity is no exception. Ethnic groups that are politically salient have active political representation and according to the results of the study, those groups with active representation are less likely to rebel (one can infer, but not conclude, that these groups which are actively represented are doing better than their powerless counterparts). Groups with some representation at the national executive power level are orders of magnitude less likely to experience ethnonationalist conflict than those with no power or those that are actively downtrodden (through discrimination). This should not be a surprise to anyone; running a country without active representation of a given ethnic group is very likely to worsen the well-being of that ethnic group, whether economically, through social issues, or both. Stakeholders being given a seat at the table lessens the risk of conflict between any given stakeholder and the state. This is a well documented phenomenon in both political science and history; being given a seat at the table makes the identities of the seat holder politically relevant and therefore more likely (but not guaranteed) to be respected and protected.  Political relevance of identity is crucial for the well-being and survival of an ethnic group, because a lack of politically relevant of ethnic identity can mean the difference between prosperity and poverty, between safety and danger, and in some cases between life and death.

I would like to introduce one caveat to my definition of politically relevant/salient identity: an identity that is actively targeted by the state is also politically relevant simply because the state is actively engaging with members of that identity group, just in the worse way possible. One can perhaps think of political relevance/salience of identity as a spectrum, where identities on one extreme are relevant and fare the worst, identities on the other extreme are relevant and fare the best, and those in the middle have varying degrees of relevance depending on their proximity to the edges. I would create an illustration if I possessed one single ounce of artistic talent, but I think you can probably visualize what I am describing. 

I thought the reading was pretty interesting, though I was not surprised by the results. I took the Political Violence course in the fall of 2019 (I think? Time doesn't exist anymore, there is only COVID and pre-COVID) with Dr. Aksoy so I've read Cederman and Fearon/Laitin and a couple other political scientists referenced in this paper. The idea that government representation helps reduce conflict, whether on the basis of ethnic or religious or some other identity, is pretty well established in political violence research. This reading has broad spectrum implications for politically relevant identities. We can apply it to the Kurds, who are without their own state and are fragmented across several Middle Eastern nations with very varied treatment by their respective governments. Iraq has had several Kurdish Prime Ministers in recent years and until recently, Kurds there had enjoyed a fragile but intact peace, mostly. In Turkey, on the other hand, where Kurds are actively put down by the Turkish government, the Kurdish political organization PKK has been embroiled in conflict with the Turkish government for years. The same pattern has repeated itself hundreds of times over the years, but governments will undoubtedly continue to exclude members of various ethnic groups from political representation, and violence will happen again.