The Economics Of Political Violence

A study of workers struggles against management regimes in Britain's car industry from the Second World War to the late 1980s.

In this pioneering volume, Dipak Gupta takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the causes of political violence and the effects of political instability. The first work to expand the scope of traditional economic growth models to include political instability, The Economics of Political Violence examines the motivations an individual might have for participating in an act of political violence. Establishing the conceptual linkages between micro-level, individual-based theory and aggregate structural theories of political violence and revolution, Gupta also constructs a composite measure of political instability. He then develops an integrated model of economic growth that incorporates political instability as an endogenous variable. Students and scholars in both political science and economics will find this book enlightening reading. Gupta begins by examining both the contributions various social science disciplines have made to the study of political violence and the theories of collective behavior that have guided many previous studies. Turning to a focus on the individual, Gupta analyzes the behavioral foundations of rebellion and explores the influences of the environment on individual political action. The next four chapters address political instability from a variety of perspectives. Gupta describes the relationship between political instability and the economy, offers an empirical definition of political instability, discusses structural explanations of political instability, and looks at the effects of political instability on economic growth. In his concluding chapter, Gupta makes policy recommendations based on the foregoing analysis. An appendix presents the index for political instability developed by the author.

This book explains the lifecycle of terrorist organizations from an innovative theoretical perspective, combining economics with social psychology. It provides a new approach to understanding human behaviour in organized society, and then uses this to analyze the forces shaping the lifecycle of violent political movements. Economic and rational-choice theorists assume that human beings are motivated only by self-utility, yet terrorism is ultimately an altruistic act in the eyes of its participants. This book highlights the importance of the desire to belong to a group as a motivating factor, and argues that all of us face an eternal trade-off between selfishness and community concern. This hypothesis is explored through four key groups; the IRA in Northern Ireland, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the Naxalites in India. Through this, the book analyzes the birth, growth, transformation and demise of violent political movements, and ends with an analysis of the conditions which determine the outcome of the war against terrorism. Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence will be essential reading for advanced students of terrorism studies and political science, and of great interest to students of social psychology and sociology.

Using behavioral economics, we can change how we perceive the threats to our safety and security faced today and better inform the institutions of our future.

This book explains how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations.

This study entails a theoretical reading of the Iranian modern history and follows an interdisciplinary agenda at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, economics, and politics and intends to offer a novel framework for the analysis of socio-economic development in Iran in the modern era. A brief review of Iranian modern history from the Constitutional Revolution to the Oil Nationalization Movement, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the recent Reformist and Green Movements demonstrates that Iranian people travelled full circle. This historical experience of socio-economic development revolving around the bitter question of “Why are we backward?” and its manifestation in perpetual socio-political instability and violence is the subject matter of this study. Michel Foucault’s conceived relation between the production of truth and production of wealth captures the essence of hypothesis offered in this study. Foucault (1980: 93–94) maintains that “In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth; indeed we must produce truth in order to produce wealth in the first place.” Based on a hybrid methodology combining hermeneutics of understanding and hermeneutics of suspicion, this monograph proposes that the failure to produce wealth has had particular roots in the failure in the production of truth and trust. At the heart of the proposed theoretical model is the following formula: the Iranian subject’s confused preference structure culminates in the formation of unstable coalitions which in turn leads to institutional failure, creating a chaotic social order and a turbulent history as experienced by the Iranian nation in the modern era. As such, the society oscillates between the chaotic states of socio-political anarchy emanating from irreconcilable differences between and within social assemblages and their affiliated hybrid forms of regimes of truth in the springs of freedom and repressive states of order in the winters of discontent. Each time, after the experience of chaos, the order is restored based on the emergence of a final arbiter (Iranian leviathan) as the evolved coping strategy for achieving conflict resolution. This highly volatile truth cycle produces the experience of socio-economic backwardness and violence. The explanatory power of the theoretical framework offered in the study exploring the relation between the production of truth, trust, and wealth is demonstrated via providing historical examples from strong events of Iranian modern history. The significant policy implications of the model are explored. This monograph will appeal to researchers, scholars, graduate students, policy makers and anyone interested in the Middle Eastern politics, Iran, development studies and political economy.

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that civil war inevitably stymies economic development and that ‘civil war represents development in reverse’. While some civil wars may have adverse economic effects, Civil War and Uncivil Development posits that not all conflicts have negative economic consequences and, under certain conditions, civil war violence can bolster processes of economic development. Using Colombia as a case study, this book provides evidence that violence perpetrated by key actors of the conflict – the public armed forces and paramilitaries – has facilitated economic growth and processes of economic globalisation in Colombia (namely, international trade and foreign direct investment), with profoundly negative consequences for large swathes of civilians. The analysis also discusses the ‘development in reverse’ logic in the context of other conflicts across the globe. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of security and development, civil war studies, peace studies, the political economy of conflict and international relations.

"This book will appeal to a broad and varied readership from a range of disciplines across the social sciences including economics, politics, sociology, history and psychology."--BOOK JACKET.