Poverty and the Organization of Political Violence

Abstract

This paper provides an analytical review of the large literature on and political violence. It offers nonspecialists a perspective on the current state of the debate in that literature and presents some conjectures that might explain unanswered questions. In this discussion, political violence primarily means civil war, although other forms are also briefly considered. And the focus is not on per se—understood as a particularly low level of income (for example, $1 a day)—but rather on the level of income across countries, groups, or individuals and the nature of its association with violence. Thus poverty here refers to low levels of economic development or income, consistent with the civil war literature, where countries with very low incomes are considered poor countries. In addition, I also consider the relationship between economic inequality and education on the one hand and political violence on the other, drawing upon related literatures on and criminal violence to consider any parallels with studies of political violence. There is an emerging consensus in the literature that a low level of income is a significant or even necessary condition for some forms of political violence, such as civil war or coups. But there is no consensus on the effects of economic inequality and education, and it is not clear that the same relationship between income and civil war applies to other forms of violence, such as terrorism. I examine more closely the empirical results that support this emerging consensus.