Die gesellschaftliche Heterogenität der Länder Ostasiens ein Vergleich der Werte neuer Datensätze

Abstract

The critical examination of the ethnic, linguistic and religious heterogeneity of the countries of sample is now standard procedure in cross-national analysis. This article compares and re-evaluates the heterogeneity values of East Asian countries provided by new data sets as part of reference sample of 90 African and Asian countries. The different heterogeneity indices correlate highly, but case analyses show that there are markedly diverging codings in some countries cases. Thus, the ethnic heterogeneity of the Philippines and that of Taiwan have been estimated quite differently. Regarding religious heterogeneity, the syncretistic religious practices dominating in East Asia pose fundamental problem for coding and index construction. Two groups of countries can be differentiated: the more homogeneous Northeast Asian countries and the more heterogeneous Southeast Asian states, while Cambodia has level of societal heterogeneity corresponding more to that of the first group and Vietnam occupies position lying between the two groups.