Transborder Ethnic Ties and Repression of Ethnic Minorities

Transborder ethnic ties constitute an alignment between an ethnic minority group and its external ethnic kin in another country. Similar to interstate alliances, in which a powerful state extends its deterrent capability to protect its protégé state against another state, a powerful external kin can extend its deterrent capability to protect a minority group against the target government. I employ deterrence theory and develop a game-theoretical model to analyze the triadic strategic interaction between a government, a minority group, and this minority group’s external kin. I argue that a minority group can only be effectively protected by its external kin when the external kin possesses a credible and capable threat of using force. I test the predictions of my model with a newly developed dataset covering 20 minority groups and 5 powerful ethnic kin. The results show that a highly credible and capable threat by an external kin significantly decreases the likelihood of government repression in the form of active and targeted political discrimination. Specifically, previous economic support to the minority group by their militarily powerful external kin constitutes a strong signal of a credible military threat, contributing to general deterrence and diminishing the probability of repression. This research contributes to the literature by moving beyond the mostly invariant factors, such as geographical proximity or the nature of ties between the groups, to understand the effect of an external ethnic kin on a minority’s security.