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The Arc of Modernization: Economic Structure, Materialism, and the Onset of Civil Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2016

J. Tyson Chatagnier  and
Emanuele Castelli
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Abstract

The onset of intrastate conflict has two requisite conditions: that prospective insurgents have an incentive to rebel, and that the state lacks the capacity to deter such a rebellion. We outline a simple rationalist argument grounded in gains from economic growth—to both individual income and state revenue—to argue that modernization has the potential to affect the likelihood of civil conflict through both of these conditions. The shift away from a rent-seeking economy affects opportunity costs for rebellion by increasing the cost of recruitment, broadening the time horizon for gain, and decreasing looting possibilities. On the state side, modernization increases state military, economic, and institutional capacity, allowing governments to deter rebellion. We construct an index of modernization from World Bank data and apply a strategic model to explore the effect of modernization on both states and rebels simultaneously. We find that the modernization process describes an arc that may increase the likelihood of unrest in the early stages, but has long-term stabilizing effects.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 233 - 252
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

J. Tyson Chatagnier, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Houston, 3551 Cullen Boulevard, Room 447, Houston, TX 77204-3011, USA (jtchatagnier@uh.edu). Emanuele Castelli, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via S. Croce 77, 38122 Trento, Italy (castelli@fbk.eu). Authors’ names are listed in reverse alphabetical order, and do not indicate unequal contributions. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2014 Meeting of the European Political Science Association and the 2014 Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors thank Filippo Andreatta, Rob Carroll, Kerim Can Kavakli, and Francesco Moro, as well as the editor and reviewers, for their helpful comments.

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