Ted Robert Gurr

The brutality in Kosovo, East Timor, and Rwanda has fed the conventional wisdom that tribal and nationalist fighting is raging out of control. It is not. Since the early 1990s, the number of new ethnic wars has dropped sharply and many old ones have been settled. The world has found a new way to manage secessionism and nationalist passions: granting autonomy, devolving and sharing state power, and recognizing group rights. Ethnic warfare's heyday may belong to the last century.