Repression or Civil War?∗

Perhaps the crowning achievement of mature democracies is the peaceful acceptance of the ballot box as the primary instrument for deciding who should hold power in society. We do not have to go far back in the history of most democratic states, however, to find a distinct role for political violence. Moreover, many inhabitants of the globe still remain at risk of falling prey to widespread violence in the struggle for political office. Forms of political violence differ a great deal. We focus on two important manifestations: repression and civil war distinguished by whether violence is one-sided or two-sided. Repression is one-sided use of violence by the incumbent government to stay in office, effectively repressing any latent insurgency by the opposition. Civil war is two-sided use of violence by the state as well as an insurgent group. These two types of violence have been studied extensively by political scientists and economists, but have typically been treated as separate phenomena.1 ∗We are grateful to David Seim and Prakarsh Singh for research assistance and to Benedikt Goderis for sharing his data with us. . 1See Christopher Blattman and Edward Miguel (2008) for a recent review of the literature on civil conflict. Paul Collier and Dominic Rohner (2008), among others, study determinants of state repression.