ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the issue of security on the individual and group levels, and explains the complex set of relationships and interactions that accompany ethnicity. Perhaps the most long-standing explanation for why ethnic conflict occurs is one based on competing nationalisms. The chapter examines that ethnic diversity is a source of both great creativity and innovation, while at the same time a source of potential tension resulting from real or perceived discrimination. It explores what may be an increasingly fraught relationship between ethnicity and conflict. One of the most disturbing and most negative outgrowths of contestation in ethnically diverse societies has been the adoption of terrorism by some ethnicity-based organizations. Researchers have established a close link between democracy and democratic participation on the one hand, and lower probabilities of ethnic violence on the other. Conflicts over self-determination are best settled through negotiations that provide regional autonomy and institutional means for pursuing collective interests within existing states.
