ABSTRACT
Restyling ethno-national conflicts as wars of secession or struggles for autonomy do not get us much further either; such wars are often political ventures by multi-ethnic movements of liberation, which do not want to have anything to do with ethnicity, or such wars occur in multi-ethnic regions. The core causal elements of ethnic conflicts include the Eurocentric or alien nature of modern nation-statehood and the inadequate degree of integration in the post-colonial states. The modern state has seldom revealed itself as a 'legitimate order' or a 'conflict-mediating institution' in the Third World. Many European conflict-researchers have competed in their neglect of ethnicity. The issue of ethnicity as resulting from, or being entailed by, something else should be put aside in favour of an analysis of the dominant elements in a conflictual formation. Ethnicized or radicalized characteristics are only relevant within the framework of inter-ethnic relations and it is primarily in conflict situations that they become a major focus of perception.
