When cities fight back: Minorities, local politics, and conflict in Europe

What explains minority-state urban conflict across Europe? When, how and why do some localities seem more prone to turn the political expression of grievance into a blood sport, while others avoid this fate altogether, even when faced with similar internal and external conditions? To answer these questions, my argument challenges existing interpretations of minority-state relations based on "national models" of integration, cultural variables and minority inequality. Instead, I find that it is the entrenchment of local political elites and their strategic foundational social alliances with minority populations that ultimately condition the likelihood of violent confrontation and the ways in which it is managed at the local level.;Combining insights from four in-depth case studies and statistical analysis of 112 French cities, I argue that the legacies of initial socio-political configurations in a locality's history shape both the nature of political party competition and the extent to which parties are compelled to entrench themselves in the city's societal and organizational structures as a means of securing long-term support and remaining competitive. The degree and the breadth of this partisan entrenchment ultimately determine the pathways of minority political inclusion -- and thus the likelihood of conflict -- as well as the government's capacity for conflict management. Where early socio-political configurations allowed one party to dominate, that party creates deeply entrenched (and coopted) social partnerships which stifle minority political leverage and create incentives for conflict. However, this deep entrenchment also provides the state with the resources to mitigate the escalation of that conflict. Conversely, where politics are highly polarized such that there is no "decisive voter", parties have little incentive to broadly entrench themselves, which both minimizes the viable non-conflictual contact points between inhabitants and elites and limits the socio-political resources available to manage the intensity of conflict. I argue that it is only in those cities where parties are forced to directly complete for minority support - and the subsequent entrenchment of those relations - that the pathways of conventional political expression will be fully inclusive and conflict unlikely.