Horizontal inequalities (HIs) within acountry, or inequalities among groups, have been shown to bean important source of violent conflict. Relevant groupcategorizations include religion, ethnicity, and region. HIscan also be measured in different ways. Ethnicity, language,religion, race, and region are examples of potentiallyrelevant and salient group categorizations. In this paperthe authors will review the prevailing HIs and theirmanagement in four West African countries - Cote d’Ivoire,Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. The report provides some basicfacts about these four countries, which vary greatly inarea, per capita income, poverty, child mortality rates, andother features. In terms of ethnoreligious demography, it isimportant to note that all four countries have a highlydiverse ethnic population, and three of the four (Ghana,Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire) have substantial Christian andMuslim populations. Each of the case study countries has hada relatively turbulent and complex political history inrecent decades. The four case study countries presentinstructive examples of the possible (mis)management of HIs.In this paper the authors analyze the evolution andmanagement of the prevailing HIs in each of the four cases.Section one gives introduction. Section two presentsevidence on the evolution and current state of HIs in eachcountry. Section three analyzes the main causes of theprevailing HIs, while section four focuses on thegovernments’ attitudes, policies, and measures toward HIs.Section five discusses the links between the HIs observedand the political outcomes. Section six draws someconclusions and makes policy recommendations for improvedmanagement of HIs in multiethnic developing countriesgenerally, and specifically in four case study countries.
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