What is a politically relevant or salient identity? Why is political relevance important?

    In their article “Why do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis,” Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min discuss the role of ethnicity in civil-war-type conflicts. They argue that their study shows that it is possible to determine the conditions under which ethnonationalist conflicts emerge. Specifically, they argue that the size of ethnic groups excluded from the governmental power structure informs the likelihood of rebellion. That is, bigger excluded ethnic groups are more likely to rebel against the government than smaller ones. They also observe that a history of conflicts or tensions between groups in a given country, including recent conflicts, are related to the likelihood that a new bout of violence will begin. All in all, Cederman, Wimmer, and Min seek to demonstrate that ethnicity is an important factor to examine in civil wars and that there is a relationship between an ethnic group’s access to political representation and the likelihood that said group will rebel.

Before I read this article, I had already begun to think about some factors that make an identity relevant or politically salient due to my efforts to construct a research question. From prior classes, observations, and this article, it seems like a politically relevant identity is an identity that holds power in the government or has the ability to deeply influence elections and candidates. To be politically relevant, an identity group needs to hold positions in the government, make up a significantly large portion of the voting bloc, or, in some electoral systems, they simply need to be clustered in crucial regions or districts. Political relevance is important for a few reasons. First, politically relevant groups get to dominate the offices of government officials which in part helps them control the political narrative. Second, politically relevant identities are identities that candidates can use to connect themselves with voters and voters with each other, and thus identities can serve as a mobilizing force in politics. By causing voters to more strongly connect to a group to which they supposedly belong, politicians can help to engender positive ingroup attitudes which can translate into votes and thus seats in the government. As a broad, overarching theme, political relevance is critical because it is directly connected to representation, one of the themes of this class. Groups that are politically irrelevant are unlikely to hold power either as public officials, or as voters. This is part of the reason why identity is so fundamental to political campaigns and advertising, which I plan to study for my research article this semester. 

I found the reading to be interesting, although somewhat dense. I think it is a good example of a contribution to an existing scholarly debate to keep in mind as we continue to move through our own research process as students. There is a lot of language that references prior studies and directly states why the authors believe it was flawed or incomplete, and why they think they have something to add to the debate. The article also seemed to highlight the difficulty of determining which variables or identities, ethnicity in this case, are relevant or causal in political science. I will certainly keep this in mind when I am coming up with ideas for how to answer my question, as I will want to be sure to separate out the different variables to determine how they interact and what end results they produce.