Poverty, Militarism and Civil War
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چکیده
This article summarizes an empirical investigation of the link between poverty and the incidence of civil war. The thesis examined is a simple one: at the individual level, low living standards tend to enhance militaristic nationalism and confidence in the armed forces and therefore, on average, more support for attempting military solutions to social conflicts. At the national level this means that, assuming central governments need some popular support in order to start and sustain military campaigns, poorer countries will tend to attempt a military solution to a wider range of conflicts than would richer nations. Thus, the oft reported correlation between low GDP per-capita and civil war incidence is partly explained through the effects living standards have on the attitudes of the population and the resulting effect on the ability of governments to sustain a military-solution approach to conflicts. This claim involves a certain shift of emphasis. When thinking about the relation between income-distribution and war, one often thinks about the conditions under which the exploited poor rebel against the rich. But civil wars today often appear to be fought over other issues and moreover, it is often the poor who support the government in fighting the insurgents. Thus, while studying the rebels’ motivations and decisions is obviously of major importance, the present paper sets these concerns aside in order to focus on the population from which the government side of the conflict must draw its support.
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تاریخ انتشار 2009