ABSTRACT
M&Mc achieve much in their policy-oriented chapter, providing sophisticated empirical backing to the orthodox liberal-market view that a growing economic pie ameliorates ethnic problems. Their message is that, despite a generally retarding effect of ethnic diversity on economic growth, the effect is significandy reduced when an economy begins from a wealthy position. High standards of living brought about by continual economic expansion minimize ethnic conflict because, in times of plenty, individual economic strategies payoff more than do collective ethnic strategies. M&Mc are thus optimistic about ethnic amalgamation since larger markets grow faster and economic growth defuses ethnic conflicts. The process works, they think, because ethnic conflict is really individual economic competition by other means. This view follows from M&Mc's highly instrumental conceptualization of ethnicity. In this view, ethnicity is a category arbitrarily defined by individuals to meet individual economic needs. By implication, there are no genetic or other non-economic interests vested in ethnic groups, at least none that cannot be eliminated by education. Indeed, in M&Mc's view, ethnic solidarity offers mainly potential costs, especially in the form of inter-ethnic crimes. Accordingly, they designate ethnocentric ideas as 'sins' and prescribe the punishment of acts that flow from such ideas.
