One of the features of the contemporary global system is that despite the presence of transnational forces and technologies that increase interdependence, reduce distances among states, and help create ties among individuals of different societies, separatism, social fragmentation, and local loyalties remain strong and widespread. However, in many instances, the profu¬sion of the means of communication along side globalization challenges existing ethnic identities. The assault on ethnic identities during the post-World War II era has precipitated waves of political action by numerous communal, ethnic, and nationalist groups. At an empirical level, the determinants of these movements may be identified in a number of grievances against the state. These grievances include the denial of opportunity for state building, the loss of one’s homeland, state involvement in economic exploitation, and the reprisal against demands for individual and collective rights. The yearning to establish one’s own state and recover lost territory and the desire to protect the group’s identity (its culture, language, religion, territory, and life-styles) against the intrusive demands of others contributes to these political movements.

Among the regions of the world, the Middle Eastern and Central Asian ethnic groups have been most active. According to Ted Gurr (1993), political action can be nonviolent protest, violent protest or rebellion. In the Middle East, he argued, the trend has been away from nonviolent to violent protests, verging more toward rebellion. As a result, many of the states in the Middle East and Central Asia are weak and vulnerable. The weakness of these states is not in the military realm, but rather in the fact that the ruling elite does not have commanding loyalty and allegiance among significant sectors of the populations and that the political stability of these states is undermined by inter group communal con¬flicts.

Literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia does not provide empirical measures necessary for rigorous hypothesis testing, nor does it incorporate a comprehensive theoretical foundation needed to identify the conditions for ethnic protest. There is also no consensus on the causes of ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia.

To improve our ability to explain ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia and to identify the necessary conditions for ethnic dissent, My colleagues Dr. Sangeeta Sinha and Dr. Vijayan Pillai tested several hypotheses embodied in grievance and political mobilization. The literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia references both models but does not systematically test their relevance.

The findings of our research do not lend much empirical support for the grievance model, which dominates the Middle Eastern and Central Asian area study literature. Cultural identity and religious freedom variables of grievance model do not provide sufficient condition for the outbreak of ethnic protest. The mobilization model has better explanatory power. It lends significant support to the hypotheses associated with the mobilization model and suggests that ethnic protest is more likely to occur under conditions of organizational cohesiveness, low levels of autocracy, and international support.