Death rate from political violence is postulated to vary cross-nationally as a positively accelerated time-lagged function of income inequality and as a nonmonotonic inverted U function of regime repressiveness. The former hypothesis is consistent with approaches to the explanation of collective political violence that emphasize the general concept of discontent or, more specifically, relative deprivation; the latter hypothesis is consistent with a political-process version of the resource mobilization approach. In the context of a multivariate model estimated across two decades, 1958-67 and 1968-77, support is found for the inequality hypothesis. Support also is foundfor the regime repressiveness hypothesis in the decade (1968-77) for which the index of regime repressiveness is available. The U-curve effect of regime repressiveness appears to have stronger impact on variation in rates of deadly political violence than the positively accelerated effect of income inequality.
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