Indigenous identity, natural resources, and contentious politics in Bolivia: a disaggregated conflict analysis; 2000-2011

摘要

How do natural resources and ethnic identity interact to incite or to mitigatesocial conflict? This article argues that high-value natural resources can act as animportant catalyst for the politicization of ethnic, specifically indigenous identity,and contribute to social conflict as they limit the malleability of identity framesand raise the stakes of confrontations. We test this argument using unique subnationaldata from Bolivian provinces. Drawing on Bolivian newspaper reports,we code conflict events for all of the 112 provinces from 2000 to 2011. Wejoin this conflict data with information on local ethnic composition from thecensus, the political representation of ethnic groups at the national level, as wellas geo-spatial information on gas deposits. Using time-series cross-sectionalcount models, we show a significant conflict-promoting effect of the share ofindigenous people in provinces with gas reserves, but not without.