Peasants, Choice, and Civil Wars

Abstract

Caught in the Crossfire: Revolutions, Repression, and the Rational Peasant. By T. David Mason. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Litttlefield Publishers, 2004. 328 pp., $78.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-7425-2538-4), $30.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7425-2539-2). David Mason has been a pioneer in the systematic study of civil wars (Mason 1984; Mason and Krane 1989; Mason and Fett 1996; Mason, Weingarten, and Fett 1999). Caught in the Crossfire: Revolutions, Repression, and the Rational Peasant reflects that experience. As Mason says, it draws several important and different research traditions together: classical theories of the causes of revolutions, dependency theory, rational choice analysis of why individuals participate in revolts, social movement theory, analysis of state response to large-scale social violence, democratization, globalization, war termination, and peacemaking. The theoretical analysis is supported and illustrated by two very good case studies. The result is an impressive and very well written book that could serve as a text for graduate or undergraduate courses. The central argument of Caught in the Crossfire is straightforward. To understand civil wars in the Third World, we need to focus on the behavior of peasants, whose choices shape these conflicts. Economic inequality by itself does not produce revolution, but the local effects of globalization—in particular the shift from subsistence to export agriculture—does. One response to this shift is to mobilize peasants to participate in nonviolent protests of various sorts. These protests generally rely on pre-existing social networks, which is one reason why ethnicity plays a significant part in such conflicts. They also use strategies already in the cultural repertoire of the peasants. The key question is how the government will respond to these protests. Mason explains why governments that are dominated by elites and that have few resources but face enormous needs so often see violence as the best, or indeed the …