Economic+Roots+of+Civil+Wars+and+Revolutions+in+the+Contemporary+World,

Summary by Namalie ** Economic Roots of Civil Wars and Revolutions in the Contemporary World (2008) ** ** Carles Boix ** __ Premise __ : Boix will offer a model of the mostly material conditions under which political actors may engage in open political violence. He predicts that the use of openly violent means in the political area will most likely occur in countries that are highly unequal and where wealth is mostly immobile. The use of violence to choose political institutions (and to determine the extent to which wealth will be redistributed) is a strategy used by economic agents to maximize wealth. ** Theoretical Evolution of Modern Political Violence ** · Modernization scholars – focused on economic inequality, social and economic development, and the status and political claims of social groups · Ethnic nationalism and distribution of resources along ethnic lines · Greed vs. grievance (Collier and Hoeffler) · Weak central governments render insurgency more feasible (Fearon and Laitin) · Civil wars as complex, diverse with pronounced differences (Kalyvas) · Motive and opportunity à Boix believes that we need to subsume the above literature and think about motive and opportunity ** Political Strategies and Political Regimes ** · Given a particular economic structure, both the wealthy and the poor engage in a set of political actions to choose the political regime that will maximize their wealth. The decision of the political actors to engage in open political violence is a function of the distribution and nature of economic assets, as well as the level of the actors’ strength (political, organizational and military) · Given the potential variation in the strength of political actors, violence erupts because there is some lack of information or uncertainty about the costs of repression and the ability of each side to win in a violent contest · The wealthy first decides whether to establish an authoritarian regime or accept democracy. o If they go with democracy, then the poor accept and everybody votes to set the level of taxes and redistribution. o If they go with an authoritarian regime, the poor will either acquiesce or revolt. If they acquiesce, then we’ll get right-wing authoritarianism. If they revolt, then violence will take place, which will result in either a right- or left-wing regime. The left-wing regime will only happen have the poor has expropriated all the assets of the wealthy. o After the poor have decided on their course of action, the wealthy decide on how to react – to challenge or not to challenge. ** Peace vs. Violent Conflict – Interclass Conflict ** · Violence will not take place under both low and medium levels of inequality and asset specificity. When the level of either inequality or wealth specificity is sufficiently low, democracy takes place, no matter the cost of repression. However, if the level of inequality and specificity increases, BUT repression costs are also high, then the wealthy will choose a democratic constitution · If inequality or specificity increases, and if the costs of repression are low, then democracy will not happen – the wealthy will repress and the poor won’t rebel because they know the repression costs are low and that a revolution would fail · High repression costs leave the wealthy without a dominant strategy; they won’t always choose repression because then the poor would try their luck and revolt, but that doesn’t mean that the won’t repress ** Outbreaks of Intraclass Conflict ** · Violence is more likely within the wealthy elite: in economies abundant in immobile assets, its members have a much higher incentive to resort to overt armed activities to grab the property of other wealthy owners · Conflict taking place within the wealthy elite: each wealthy individual may have an incentive to expropriate the assets of other members of the group · Once the wealthy have established an authoritarian regime and once the poor have decided to rebel or to acquiesce, one or some of the members of the wealthy class may choose to fight with others of their own group · Intraclass conflict will happen with some positive probability among the wealthy when intraelite conflict does not jeopardize the dominant position of the elite – meaning repression costs are low · As asset specificity increases, the wealthy have a stronger incentive to fight each other – there is more wealth to grab from each other. Intraelite conflict tends to take place in agrarian or natural-resource economies, and not in developed countries ** Conclusion and Results ** · Most civil wars occur in countries where both the agrarian sector is still dominant and land is distributed unequally · Most civil wars fall within the area defined by high inequality and high asset specificity – cases that are more towards the middle, away from this area, have considerable oil resources and so conflict there may be related to asset immobility · When both equality and industrialization increase then the probability of civil war declines quickly · In predominantly agrarian societies civil wars occur with a similar probability regardless of the distribution of land · Boix finds that neither ethnic fractionalization nor religion fractionalization are statistically significant · Guerilla warfare – since guerrilla warfare is far more widespread than civil wars, factors other than land inequality and asset mobility must account for the former’s higher probability – the variables that Boix finds to be the most significant are ethnicity and geography · Revolutions – per capita income enters very strongly into the model, democracy and geography do not matter · Modern political violence occurs when assets are immobile and unequally distributed. · In economies where wealth is either mobile or hard to tax or confiscate, sustained political violence to grab those assets does not pay off since their owners can either leave in response to the threat or are indispensable to optimal exploitation of assets · Boix’s model incorporates the idea that opportunities (both organization and geographical) drive the costs of engaging in violence and therefore determine the likelihood that overt conflict will occur