Threats to Peace: Development and Conflict

正在进行结构转型的国家的经济增长往往涉及人力和物力资源的大规模重新分配。即使从长期角度来看，这种增长是有道理的，但它可能在短期和中期带来困难，它可能给那些在其一生中永远得不到痛苦补偿的个人和群体带来困难。因此，经济增长可能是冲突性的也就不足为奇了。该项目明确地从经济角度对社会冲突的理论和经验研究进行了分析，而不是简单地将这种冲突描述为"文明的冲突"。"这个项目的三个组成部分中的每一个都描述了可能导致冲突的经济和社会特征之间的相互作用。第一个组成部分研究了不同种族群体之间的两极分化如何因每个群体内部的经济不平等而加剧。第二个组成部分研究是小团体还是大团体参与反对国家的冲突，以及这些结果如何受到"冲突奖"性质的影响。"最后一部分研究贸易自由化和暴力之间的联系。一个中心主题（也是早期的发现）是，社会冲突虽然是出于经济动机，但往往是按沿着种族界线组织的：种族两极化的社会是冲突的。第一个项目通过相互作用的经济因素扩展了这项研究;具体来说，群体内的经济不平等，两极分化。这种不平等综合了冲突过程的两个不同方面：一个群体中的穷人提供劳动力，富人提供资金。这种不正当的金融和劳动力协同作用在阶级冲突中通常是不可用的。它可以突出种族暴力。群体不平等/冲突的关系似乎找到了强有力的实证支持。第二个项目探讨了经济与种族之间相互作用的另一个方面。它结合并调和了两种截然不同的冲突观点-一种是"多数人暴政"，即大群体将其偏好强加于小群体，另一种是"帕累托-奥尔森论点"，即小群体比大群体更有可能发起游说或冲突。这两种观点通过改变冲突回报的性质而得到调和：私人回报鼓励较小的群体发生冲突，而公共回报则相反。这些关系在数据中非常明显。另一个先前的主题是，经济增长在短期内可能会有很大的冲突，特别是如果经济增长在各个部门或群体之间不平衡的话。最后一个项目研究印度的贸易自由化和基于性别的暴力。报告显示，减少贸易壁垒，特别是非关税配额，对暴力侵害妇女行为，特别是强奸行为产生了重大的积极影响。进口配额的减少造成了大规模的部门劳动力流动;当关税在配额存在的情况下发生变化时，情况并非如此。这项研究将自由化与男性劳动力的错位和女性劳动力的新进入联系起来，并将这些过程与性暴力联系起来。虽然长期的持续增长最终可能会平息冲突，但中期的不均衡增长（在群体或部门之间）很可能会加剧冲突。这项研究的知识核心结合了传统的经济理论--理性的个人，以博弈论和均衡解决方案概念的方法论使用为特征的战略环境-生成和测试对我们一生中最重要的现象之一的预测：内部社会冲突，通常沿着沿着种族界限划分。

Economic growth in countries undergoing structural transformations often involves a massive reallocation of resources, human and physical. Even if such growth is warranted from a long-term perspective, it can bring hardship in the short to medium run, and it can do so to individuals and groups who will never be compensated for their pains, in their lifetime. It is not surprising, then, that economic growth can be conflictual. This project explicitly brings an economic perspective to the theory and empirical study of social conflict, as opposed to simplistic pronouncements describing such conflict as a "clash of civilizations."Each of the three components of this project describes an interplay between economic and social characteristics that could lead to conflict. The first component studies how polarization across different ethnic groups can be exacerbated by economic inequality within each group. The second component studies whether small or large groups enter into conflict against the State, and howthese outcomes are influenced by the nature of the "conflict prize." The final component studies the connections between trade liberalization and violence.A central theme (and earlier finding) is that social conflict, while economically motivated, is often organized along ethnic lines: ethnically polarized societies are conflictual. The first project extends this research by interacting economic factors; specifically, within-group economic inequality, with polarization. Such inequality synthesizes two different aspects of the conflict process: the poor in a group supply their labor, the rich their finances. This perverse synergy of finance and labor is typically unavailable in class-based conflicts. It can make ethnic violence salient. The group-inequality/conflict nexus appears to find strong empirical support.The second project explores yet another aspect of the interaction between economics and ethnicity. It combines and reconciles two very different views of conflict -- one, the "tyranny of the majority," in which large groups impose their preferences on smaller groups, with another, the "Pareto-Olsen thesis," which argues that smaller groups are more likely to initiate lobbies or conflicts rather than larger groups. The two views are reconciled by varying the nature of conflict payoffs: private payoffs encourage smaller groups to be conflictual, while the opposite is true of public payoffs. These relationships are strongly visible in the data. Another previous theme is that economic growth might be highly conflictual in the near term, especially if that growth has been uneven across sectors or groups. The final project studies trade liberalization and gender-based violence in India. It shows that the reduction of tradebarriers -- especially non-tariff^ quotas -- has had a significant and positive impact on violence against women; specifically, on rape. The reduction of import quotas has created large sectoral movements of labor; the same is not true when tariffs change in the presence of quotas. The study connects liberalization with the dislocation of male labor and with the new entry of female labor, and links these processes to sexual violence.While sustained growth in the long term could finally tame conflict, there is every possibility that medium-term uneven growth, among groups or sectors, could inflame it. The intellectual core of this research marries traditional economic theory - rational individuals, strategic environments characterized by the methodological use of game theory, and equilibrium solution concepts - to generate and test predictions about one of the most significant phenomena in our lifetime: internal social conflict, often demarcated along ethnic lines.