Group inequality and the severity of civil conflict

Abstract

Civil conflicts, which have been much more prevalent than inter-state conflicts over the last fifty years, vary enormously in their intensity, with some causing millions of deaths and some far fewer. The central goal of this paper is to test an argument from previous theoretical research that high inequality within an ethnic group can make inter-ethnic conflict more violent because such inequality decreases the opportunity cost to poor group members of fighting, and also decreases the opportunity cost to rich group members of funding the conflict. To test this argument, we create a new data set that uses individual-level surveys to measure inequality within ethnic groups. The analysis using these data provide strong evidence for the importance of within-group inequality, and thus underscores the value of focusing on the capacity of groups to fight if one wishes to limit the destruction of civil conflicts.

Inequalities and conflict in Africa: An empirical investigation

“…This is further confirmed by Huber and Mayoral (2014), who maintain that most inequality within countries occurs between ethnic groups, whereas inequality within groups account for a small proportion of national inequality. And the fact that variations in the Gini coefficient of a country are typically correlated with inequality between groups but are much smaller within groups explains the reason for which overall inequality might not correlate with conflicts.…”

The Structure of Ethnic Inequality and Ethnic Voting

“…limitations. In particular, they have difficulty distinguishing between members of different groups when they live in the same urban areas (Huber and Mayoral 2014). Ultimately, the consistency of our results across measures mitigates concerns over measurement.…”

“…Theories of ethnic politics have long noted the importance of differential resource endowments between groups in sustaining ethnic conflict (Gurr 1970;Huber and Mayoral 2014) and more recently ethnic voting (Huber and Suryanarayan 2016). The more ethnic groups are stratified economically, the more likely they are to engage in distinctive political behavior.…”

Rainfall Inequality, Political Power, and Ethnic Conflict in Africa

“…40 The interaction coefficient is positive and highly significant. 41 Allegedly, this result could still be consistent with a pure opportunity-cost mechanism, as the recently downgraded ethnic group might also find it easier to mobilize group members to fight as a consequence of the relative drop in resources. However, if opportunity-cost considerations were the driving force, the effect should be strongest when the non-leading group not only receives less rain than the leading group, but also less rain than its usual level.…”

“…Indeed, while for the relative deprivation theory (Gurr, 1970) 40 From the most to the least powerful group, the scale goes: Monopolist, Dominant, Senior Partner, Junior Partner, Powerless, Discriminated. 41 42 Although, allegedly, these two tests do not allow us to unequivocally pin down the mechanism, they do suggest that grievances are likely to play an important role in explaining the observed relationship between resource inequality and conflict.…”