ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between a country's ethnic structure and its level of conflict. It reviews the array of policies that Southeast Asian governments have implemented in order to tackle the inherent ethnic structure. These policies include language policies, the inclusion of religion into nationalism and the political and legal structure, affirmative action economic policies, and transmigration policies. The chapter argues that the ethnic conflicts experienced in Southeast Asia can be attributed to aspects of each countries' ethnic structures, including the level of ethnic fractionalization, ethno-religious crosscuttingness, ethnic income inequality, and ethnogeographic intermixing. In sum, ethnic structure is a crucial factor that governments cannot afford to ignore. The solutions are not clear, but the Southeast Asia experience suggests that some attempt to overcome the conflict-inducing aspects of this inherent structure could have considerable payoffs for the future of ethnic relations in the region.
