Discrete Polarisation with an Application to the Determinants of Genocides

Inequality and polarisation are two different measures of heterogeneity. As in the case of inequality, the measurement of polarisation was initially developed in the context of a continuous dimension (income). However, in many important dimensions, like ethnicity, there are no available measures of distance across ethnic groups and individuals are mostly separated by the dichotomous perception we versus they. In this article we analyse the theoretical properties of a measure of polarisation based on classifications (discrete polarisation) instead of continuous distances across groups. The second part of the article presents an application of the index of discrete ethnic polarisation to the explanation of genocides. In the twentieth century, genocides and state mass murder have killed more people than have all wars. Institute for the Study of Genocide. International Association of Genocide Scholars. The concept of polarisation has been used frequently in political science and eco-nomics, although its precise conceptualisation has turned out to be evasive and diffi-cult. For this reason many authors used it in a very imprecise, and sometime