Deprivation and Contentious Politics Revisited: The Effect of National Economic Performance on Mobilization and Political Violence

• In Event: 2366 - Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 3. Peace, War, and Social Conflict: Structure and Violence

Abstract

The effect of economic difficulty on social unrest has been debated for many decades. Though different measures of deprivation have been used in past studies, I argue that negative national economic growth rates are a useful aggregate measure of relative increases in economic adversity and grievances among a population. I use negative binomial regressions to test a three-year moving average of GDP per capita growth rate, a proxy for economic adversity, on three forms of mobilization and two forms of political violence using cross-national time-series data spanning 131 countries from 1960-2010. Economic growth rate is significant and negative for all three forms of mobilization and one of the two measures of violence, suggesting economic difficulty is an important factor in stoking multiple forms unrest. The results suggest that scholars should take more seriously the role of economic adversity in understanding the occurrence of politically contentious events.

Author

• Arman Ali Neugebauer Azedi, University of California, Irvine