Do radical political demands increase the risk of ethnic civil conflict? And why do ethnic movements make radical demands in the first place? We contend that when movements are fragmented, individual organizations use far-reaching claims relative to the status quo to attract attention from the government, boost intra-organizational discipline, and outbid rivals. Yet, such radical claims also increase the risk of conflict escalation. We test our arguments at both the ethnic group and organizational levels, using a new dataset on ethno-political organizations and their political demands. Our results show that the scope of demands increases the more organizations exist within an ethnic movement and that radical demands increase the risk of civil conflict onset. This effect is specific to the dyadic government-movement interaction, irrespective of other ethnic groups in the country. Moreover, at the organizational level, radicalization in demands increases the likelihood that an organization becomes engaged in civil conflict.

激进的政治要求是否会增加种族内部冲突的风险？为什么族群运动首先会提出激进的要求？我们认为，当运动支离破碎时，个别组织会使用与现状相关的深远主张来吸引政府的注意力，加强组织内纪律，并出价击败竞争对手。然而，这种激进的主张也增加了冲突升级的风险。我们使用关于民族政治组织及其政治要求的新数据集，在族群和组织层面测试我们的论点。我们的研究结果表明，民族运动中存在的组织越多，要求的范围就越大，而激进的要求会增加发生内战的风险。这种效应特定于二元政府-运动互动，与该国其他民族无关。此外，在组织层面，需求的激进化增加了组织卷入内部冲突的可能性。