Geographically Segregated Culture is associated with Lower Mobility, Weaker Democracy, and Increased Risk of Civil Conflict

Stable nations require strangers to coordinate and cooperate despite cultural differences. Using the Cultural Fixation Index (CFST) on World Values Survey data (268,992 participants; 95 countries; 2005–2022), we quantify within-country cultural distances between regions, ethnicities, religious groups, education levels, and social classes, to predict various measures of social mobility, democracy, and civil conflict. A pre-registered multiverse analysis (54,600 model specifications; 100 model families; 6 demographic groupings; 6 outcome measures) shows only one robust association with institutional weakness and conflict: larger cultural distance between geographic regions is associated with higher corruption, weaker democracy, lower social mobility, and greater risk of civil conflict. Distances between ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic groups are mostly benign, being largely unrelated to national indicators of governance, mobility, and conflict, and educational distance is often associated with lower corruption and stronger democracies. The results imply that what matters is not diversity per se, but whether culturally distinct groups are geographically segregated.