What might have caused the post-2007 election violence in Kenya? Was it election irregularities as widely claimed or could it have been simmering ethnicrivalries waiting to spill over? While not directly focusing on the post-election violence, we investigate a number of issues that divided Kenyans in the 2007 Presidential election. Following a rational choice framework and using survey data of ...

This paper tests the validity of the claim that inequality leads to political instability, as well as several other hypotheses about the tolerance for inequality. Using data from the Social Conflict in Africa Database, I examine macro-level implications of micro-level theories about grievances and collective action, complementing earlier research on the individual-level correlates of protest pa...

The paper discusses the case histories of three patients who have faced the emotional implications of being initiated onto long-term parenteral nutrition (PN). In each case the patient's personal and family history, relationship to their illness and the presence or relative absence of resentments and grievances have influenced their ability to tolerate the training and the transition to home PN...

Recent literature has pointed at the importance of (changes) in the economic environment for the understanding of conflict dynamics. Two channels, negative income shocks on the one hand and the presence of exportable commodities on the other hand are considered as drivers of conflict. This paper studies these two channels with a new fifteen-year panel of community level data on Burundi. We find...

This article develops a social psychological model of politicized collective identity that revolves around 3 conceptual triads. The 1st triad consists of collective identity, the struggle between groups for power, and the wider societal context. It is proposed that people evince politicized collective identity to the extent that they engage as self-conscious group members in a power struggle on...

This paper begins by describing a universally recurring socio-cultural 'game' of inter-group competition for control of resources. It next describes efforts to author software agents able to play the game as real humans would – which suggests the ability to study alternative ways to influence them, observe PMESII effects, and potentially understand how best to alter the outcomes of potential co...