(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

When the proportion of the Sinhalese population who Let me switch the venue to the case of India. My grad- ‘
were young adults reached 20 percent of the total pop- uate student, Joan Butler-Qazi, meticulously went
ulation—what we term a youth bulge—the Sinhalese through numerous Indian newspapers and other publi-
insurgency of 1970 occurred. Although other factors, cations and came up with measures of violence for I
which I do not mean to diminish, were behind the each of the country’s districts. Then she correlated
uprising, it is more than coincidental that the peak in these measures of violence with the size of'the l5-to-
that age group took place as conflict broke out. 24 age cohort in 1981. The correlation for India as a
Indeed, a former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka told me whole was an R squared of 0.77.2 Here, the overall
that all the insurgents in the rebellion were under 24 demographic variable is driving ethnic conflict gener-
years old.
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ally.
'
The Tamil population shows a similar story. At the
time of the Sinhalese insurgency, the percent of the Conclusion
Tamil population that was age 15 to 24 was low and,
thereby, caused no problem. In response to the Sinha- We have also examined the youth bulge situation
lese insurgency, the govemment made changes in the more broadly, not only as it relates to ethnic conflict.
allocation of resources, jobs, land, and higher educa- For South Korea, for example, we predicted flatly that
tional opportunities. So by the time the Tamil youth youth riots would taper off and eventually disappear
bulge occurred, numerous institutions and laws were as a result of the shrinking of-a youth bulge.’ Finally,
in place that favored the Sinhalese rather than the one tremendous advantage in using demographic vari-
Tamils. As such, the outbreak of a much more serious ables for analyzing conflicts, including ethnic ones, is
episode of violence took place coincident with the rise that often the data are quite easy to come by.
of the Tamil youth bulge. This bulge, incidentally, has
lasted such a long time that it has become entrenched Z The publication of this research is foflhcoming
"1 the 59c1ety- Even when H goes awa§'_'Pr°bably bY 3 See Political Geography, January 1990, pp. 9-21.
l995—its effects are going to linger because of its
longevity.
154
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