Since the 1990s, ethnic divisions have replaced the cold war as the world's most important source of violent conflict (Lijphart 2002). According to Fearon and Laitin (2003), a conservative estimate of the total dead between 1945 and 1999 is 16.2 million, five times the interstate toll, as a direct result of about 127 civil wars that each killed at least 1,000. The problem of ethnic tensions is so widespread and serious that it has presented a major impediment to further democratization in this century and has possibly caused a third reverse wave of democratization (Lijphart 2002). Are ethnic tensions and conflicts inevitable in heterogeneous states? Which governmental institutions (parliamentary or presidential) and electoral systems (PR or SMD) create the best framework for addressing ethnic conflict? Is there any one-size-fits-all institutional solution to ethnic conflict? This dissertation aims at answering these urgent but under-explored questions, especially the last two about the effects of institutional arrangements. This dissertation will hold out institutional prescriptions that meet the needs of specific divided societies through a large-N quantitative study covering all ethnic groups in Minorities at Risk dataset from 1985 to 2003. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-270).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 534-560). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris II, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 1115-1140). Also issued in print.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Habil.-Schr.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris II, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 1115-1140).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 426-441). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 426-441). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 387-403).

Within recent political theory, political liberalism has answered the question of how to deal with pluralism in contemporary society largely in terms of tolerance. Prompted by the same question, agonistic political theory has been in search of a way to move beyond liberal invocations of tolerance to a deeper celebration of difference. This project tells the story of the move within political theory from tolerance to difference, and the concomitant move from epistemology to ontology, through an exposition of the work of liberal theorists John Rawls and Richard Rorty and of agonistic, or post-Nietzschean, political theorists Chantal Mouffe and William Connolly. From a theological perspective, the ontological turn within recent theory can be seen as a welcome development, as can the desire to expand our capacity to engage with difference and to augment our current political imagination given contemporary conditions of pluralism. Yet the sufficiency of the answers and ontology put forward by both political liberalism and post-Nietzschean political thought needs to be seriously questioned. Indeed, the ontological turn in political theory opens the way for a theological turn, for theology is equally concerned with questions of human being and 'what there is' more generally. To make this 'theological turn,' I look to Saint Augustine, and the ontology disclosed though his writings, to see what theological resources he offers for an engagement with difference. Through this discussion we re-discover Augustine's Heavenly City as the place in which unity and diversity, harmony and plurality can come together in ways that are not possible outside of participation in the Triune God. Yet this does not mean that the Heavenly City is to take over the earthly city. By putting Augustine into conversation with more recent theologians such as John Milbank, Karl Barth, and William Cavanaugh, we consider the relationship between the Heavenly City and the earthly city and we offer a picture in which renewed and expanded conceptions of 'public' and 'conversation' open the way for rich engagement between the many different particularities that constitute a pluralist society.