The inequality–conflict nexus re-examined

Henrikas BartuseviÄ Ius ()
Additional contact information
Henrikas BartuseviÄ Ius: Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University

Journal of Peace Research, 2014, vol. 51, issue 1, 35-50

Abstract: The impact of inequality on the outbreak of intrastate armed conflicts or civil wars has recently attracted considerable interest in conflict research. In contrast to previous studies that have focused on inequality in the total population (vertical inequality), recent studies have analysed inequality between certain groups of people (horizontal inequality), and found that inequality significantly increases the likelihood of conflict onset. However, most of the recent studies on the inequality–conflict nexus have focused on conflicts fought between ethnic groups. The relation between inequality and other (non-ethnic) categories of conflicts has attracted less attention. The present study aims to address this gap: it implements a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relation between inequality and popular rebellions, a subset of conflicts where mobilization transcends ethnic boundaries and hostilities involve popular participation. Based on a sample of 77 popular rebellions and new global data on vertical inequality in income and education, this study shows that inequality significantly increases the likelihood of popular rebellion onset. In addition, the study reveals that inequality proxies (income and education Gini indices) outperform proxies of the absolute level of income (GDP per capita) in the model of popular rebellion onset, suggesting that it is relative, not absolute, well-being that ultimately motivates people to rise up in arms.

Keywords: civil war onset; educational inequality; ethnic conflict; income inequality; non-ethnic conflict; popular rebellion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/51/1/35.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:51:y:2014:i:1:p:35-50

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().