E CONOMIC E XPLANATIONS OF P ROTEST AND C ONFLICT T

3.2.1 Does economics determine politics, or the other way around?

The relationship between economic structure and political system is an old theme in political science. To Marx it was changes in the structure of production that produced political change. Weber, on the other hand, favored the primacy of culture: the rise of capitalism, the Industrial Revolution, and the Democratic Revolution was to a large extent a result of the emergence of the Protestant Ethic (Inglehart 1997:9)

In the 1950s and 1960s, theorists of the Modernization School assumed that the social and cultural changes following modernization would in turn lead to democratization in developing countries, like they were said to have done in the West. They assumed that “all good things go together”, meaning that societies who experienced economic and social development would also experience democratization, but the economic changes were assumed to come first.

Although more conscious of political processes, social scientists like Seymour Martin Lipset, Barrington Moore, and Robert A. Dahl agreed with Rostow that political

developments depended upon economic structure and changes. Lipset established that industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of wealth and education created good conditions for stable elected government (Lipset 1981). To Barrington Moore, the growth of a commercial bourgeoisie would lead to democracy, as the new middle class would demand political reform to secure their personal freedoms and property rights vis-à-vis the old landed aristocracy (Moore 1996). Robert A. Dahl (1971) argued that countries with a high level of socio-economic development would be more likely to be democracies because they generally had higher level of education and communication, a more pluralistic social order, and prevented extreme inequalities.

Analyses that, contrary to economic explanations, favor the primacy of culture, often take as their starting point Almond and Verba’s “The Civic Culture” (1965). This study is concerned with the cultural conditions for democracy and mass participation.

The authors argue that democratization requires the establishment of a political culture based on persuasion, consensus and diversity; what they call “the civic culture” (Almond and Verba 1965:6).

Samuel Huntington (1968) shared the modernization therorists’ view that modernity was likely to lead to democratization, but argued that the process of modernization, on the contrary, more likely would produce instability. While modernization brings people both increased economic opportunities and increased expectations, the expectations are likely to grow faster than economic opportunities, thus creating a gap between people’s aspirations and their possibility to fulfill them. This gap produces a social frustration that can be destabilizing if the mobility opportunities are low and political institutions weak and not capable of containing the rising demands on them by increasingly conscious and socially frustrated citizens.

3.2.2 Determinants of conflict: What role for economics?

It is a reasonable assumption that violent rebellion is more likely in times of

assumption at a general level. Boswell and Dixon (1990:554) and Muller and Weede (1990:648) found that high rates of economic growth reduce the incidence of violent rebellion and political violence (Auvinen 1997:178). Other studies have showed that level of economic development in a society correlates negatively with political violence (Hardy (1979), Weede (1981), Zimmermann (1980:177), all referred in Auvinen1997:179). However, the relationship between economic level and political conflict is not a simple one; for example those least likely of political protest and violence may often be the very poorest, who have to spend all their resources on daily survival. One tool for analyzing the relation between economy and conflict is provided by Ted Robert Gurr’s concept of relative deprivation.

Gurr used the term “relative deprivation” to explain people’s incentives to use violent rebellion (Gurr 1970). He defined relative deprivation as “actors’ perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and their value capabilities” (ibid:24), where value expectations of a collectivity were “the average value positions to which its members believe they are justifiably entitled”, and value capabilities were “the average value positions [a collectivity’s] members perceive themselves capable of attaining or maintaining”. The sources of an individual’s value standards can be a reference group, the individual’s past condition, an abstract ideal, or the standards articulated by a leader (ibid:25). Political violence is thus seen as a result of people’s frustration over their living conditions. It is not the level of material welfare in itself that determines conflict, but rather the extent to which the level of welfare is perceived as unjust.

Gurr identifies three patterns of relative deprivation. Decremental deprivation is where deprivation is experienced in relations to past conditions; that is, when conditions have worsened. Aspirational deprivation refers to a situation where value expectations rise whereas value capabilities remain constant. This can happen when traditional societies are exposed to, or come to know of, better material ways of life.

It can also happen when industrialization and growth in a society gives some people better living conditions, whereas the majority don’t experience this change. Finally,

progressive deprivation refers to the mechanism showed by Davies’ J-curve¹⁴; that is where a long-term economic and social improvement generates expectations of continued improvement, but is interrupted by stagnation or decline.

3.2.3 Greed or grievance?

Deprivation theories have been attacked in recent years for over-focusing the “pull factor” of economic deprivation and underscoring the “push factor” that rebellion and war may be a lucrative business for some. Collier and others have argued that the prospect of income from control over natural resources is an essential motivation for rebel leaders. In a quantitative study of 161 countries, Collier (2000) found that his indicators of greed corresponded with violent conflict, whereas his indicators of grievance did not.¹⁵

While Collier’s perspective may be useful in turning our attention to the economic motivations of elites in war, it has also been met with criticism. Luckham et.al.

(2001) point out that greed may have become more important with the weakening of the state in the last decade, but that it is more useful as an explanatory factor for some conflicts (Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the two Congos) than for others. They further criticize the distinction between greed and grievance motives as simplistic. Is not youth impoverishment, for example, which lead young men to join rebel groups (or militias), a sign of grievance as much as of greed?