Different scholars have given varied analysis on the Ivorian crisis and the socio-political and cultural implications of "Ivoirité". Some argue that "Ivoirité" was meant to foster a nationalist concept that would rally and unite all factions of the Ivorian society behind a common national identity and differentiate the Ivorian from his Malian and Burkinabe neighbors. Others prescribe more to a blatant chauvinist theory of exclusion based on origin meant to divide rather than unite all Ivorians.

Notions of ethnicity as it has been written by scholars, derives from the instability of arbitrarily and artificially drawn boundaries within African states which, has been a major source of ethnic conflict in Africa. This study report provided an overview of studies carried out by leading scholars on the historical and socio-political conditions leading to the coup d'état of December 24, 1999 and the 2002 division of Côte d'Ivoire into two warring blocs.

The research also provides an assessment of governance, multi-party politics, and the emergence of identity politics in Côte d'Ivoire. In addition, it examines ethnicity, citizenship, and conflict over land rights in Côte d'Ivoire in the forest belt in the context of the interplay of historical, socioeconomic and political forces shaping changes in the centrality of ethnic identity politics over the last ten years. The research expands and updates the 2010 post presidential electoral violence and the scramble by the African Union's emissaries (AU), The West African Economic Community (ECOWAS), the UN, as well as France to minimize violence and come to a viable, inclusive government, and peace agreement between Ouattara and Gbagbo. Both respectively declared winners of the November 2010 presidential election by the Commission Electorale Indépendante (CEI) and the Conseil Constitutionel Ivoirien (CCI).