ABSTRACT
For the purpose of policy-relevant analysis, the state is often deliberately de-ethnicized in order to evaluate it technocratically in terms of its putative functions as a provider of welfare, security and representation. This would suggest that ethnic conf lict results from states that are incompetent in providing welfare, poorly designed to adjudicate conf lict, or too weak to provide security. In contrast, by looking at each of these functions in terms of processes rather than outcomes, it becomes clear that not only is ethnic conf lict shaped by the state, but that the process is two-way, such that as Tilly (1975: 42) describes of another context: ‘war makes the state, and the state makes war’.
