Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups (CREG) Fractionalization/Polarization Estimates

This is a data set with state-year estimates for ethnic and religious fractionalization/polarization, by way of the Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups (CREG) project at the University of Illinois. I-L-L.

Usage

creg

Format

A data frame with 11523 observations on the following 9 variables.

ccode

a Correlates of War state code

gwcode

a Gleditsch-Ward state code

creg_ccode

a numeric code for the state, mostly patterned off Correlates of War codes but with important differences. See details section for more.

year

the year

ethfrac

an estimate of the ethnic fractionalization index. See details for more.

ethpol

an estimate of the ethnic polarization index. See details for more.

relfrac

an estimate of the religious fractionalization index. See details for more.

relpol

an estimate of the religious polarization index. See details for more.

Details

The data-raw directory on the project's Github contains more information about how these data were created. Pay careful attention to how I assigned CoW/G-W codes. The underlying data are version 1.02.

The state codes provided by the CREG project are mostly Correlates of War codes, but with some differences. Summarizing these differences: the state code for Serbia from 1992 to 2013 is actually the Gleditsch-Ward code (340). Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991-onward) is 393 and not 365. The Soviet Union has the 365 code. Yugoslavia has the 345 code. The code for Yemen (678) is effectively the Gleditsch-Ward code because it spans the entire post-World War II temporal domain. Likewise, the code for post-unification Germany is the Gleditsch-Ward code (260) as well. The codebook actually says it's 265 (which would be East Germany's code), but this is assuredly a typo based on the data.

The codebook cautions there are insufficient data for ethnic group estimates for Cameroon, France, India, Kosovo, Montenegro, Mozambique, and Papua New Guinea. The French case is particularly disappointing but the missing data there are a function of both France's constitution and modelling issues for CREG (per the codebook). There are insufficient data to make religious group estimates for China, North Korea, and the short-lived Republic of Vietnam.

The fractionalization estimates are the familiar Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index. The polarization formula comes by way of Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2000), though this book does not appear to be published beyond its placement online. I recommend Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005) instead. You can cite Alesina (2003) for the fractionalization measure if you'd like.

In the most literal sense of "1", the group proportions may not sum to exactly 1 because of rounding in the data. There were only two problem cases in these data worth mentioning. First, in both data sets, there would be the occasional duplicates of group names by state-year (for example: Afghanistan in 1951 in the ethnic group data and the United States in 1948 in the religious group data). In those cases, the script I make available in the data-raw directory just select distinct values and that effectively fixes the problem of duplicates, where they do appear. Finally, Costa Rica had a curious problem for most years in the religious group data. All Costa Rica years have group data for Protestants, Roman Catholics, and "others." Up until 1964 or so, the "others" are zero. Afterward, there is some small proportion of "others". However, the sum of Protestants, Roman Catholics, and "others" exceeds 1 (pretty clearly) and the difference between the sum and 1 is entirely the "others." So, I drop the "others" for all years. I don't think that's terribly problematic, but it's worth saying that's what I did.

References

Alesina, Alberto, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat and Romain Wacziarg. 2003. "Fractionalization". Journal of Economic Growth 8: 155-194.

Montalvo, Jose G. and Marta Reynal-Querol. 2005. "Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars" American Economic Review 95(3): 796--816.

Nardulli, Peter F., Cara J. Wong, Ajay Singh, Buddy Petyon, and Joseph Bajjalieh. 2012. The Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups (CREG) Project. Cline Center for Democracy.