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Relative Resources: Inequality in Ethnic Wars, Revolutions, and Genocides

Program on Intrastate Conflict, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, marie_besancon{at}harvard.edu

Political scientists and economists have exhaustively examined the nexus between economic inequality and political conflict (EI-PC nexus) in aggregated civil wars. This article revisits the nexus and its related theories, empirically and parsimoniously testing the effects of inequality on disaggregated intrastate conflicts. The results buttress the notion that traditionally deprived identity groups are more likely to engage in conflict under more economically equal conditions, while class or revolutionary wars fall under the conditions of greater economic inequality and war. Of the three types of conflicts tested - ethnic conflicts, revolutions, and genocides - economic inequality seems to have the most ambiguous bearing on genocides. Support follows for recent findings that political and social equalities are of greater importance in mitigating ethnic violence and that greed factors might exacerbate violence in all civil conflicts, including genocides. The theoretical argument proposes that the context within which intrastate violence takes place affects the requisite level of relative resources needed for the escalation of violence between groups. The results have policy implications for ethnically divided states that are in the process of equalizing their income differential, but neglect the substantial inclusion of all groups within the political process and the distribution of public goods. The social contracts between the governors and the governed then require careful crafting for a peaceful coexistence of diverse identity groups.

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