Measuring Politically-relevant Identity, With and Without Groups

Quantitative scholarship on civil conflict still largely relies upon the ethnic group as the foundation for measures of politically-relevant diversity and, in particular, identity-based political inclusion. However, ethnicity remains notoriously difficult to measure: even cutting-edge analyses are subject to the issues of intra- and inter-ethnic variation in identity salience that plagued earlier work. Here I propose a new way to measure identity-based exclusion. Specifically, I use latent variable models to combine data from both the Ethnic Power Relations Project, which uses the demographic size of politically-relevant ethnic groups to operationalize inclusion; and the Varieties of Democracy Project, which measures overall identity-based inclusion without directly accounting for demographic group size. The latent variable models combine insights from both measurement approaches, ameliorating concerns about using either strategy in isolation. In addition to providing cross-nationally cohesive data on identity-based exclusion for future work, these models provide a framework for scholars to build their own theoretically-driven models of politically-relevant diversity and inclusion