IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/epc/journl/v4y2009i1p32-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conflict as the absence of contract

Author

Listed:
  • S. Mansoob Murshed

    (Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and Center for the Study of Civil War (CSCW), Peace Research Institute, Oslo)

Abstract

Two phenomena have been recently utilized to explain conflict onset: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that grievance fuels conflict. Central to grievance are concepts of interethnic or horizontal inequality. Identity formation is also crucial to intrastate conflict, as it overcomes the collective action problem. Conflict can rarely be explained by greed alone. The greed explanation for conflict duration and secessionist wars works best in cross-country studies but has to make way for grievance-based arguments in quantitative country-case studies. Grievances and horizontal inequalities may be better at explaining why conflicts begin, but not necessarily why they persist. Neither the presence of greed or grievance is sufficient for the outbreak of violent conflict, something which requires the breakdown of the social contract

Suggested Citation

  • S. Mansoob Murshed, 2009. "Conflict as the absence of contract," Economics of Peace and Security Journal, EPS Publishing, vol. 4(1), pages 32-38, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:epc:journl:v:4:y:2009:i:1:p:32-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.epsjournal.org.uk/index.php/EPSJ/article/view/87
    Download Restriction: Open access 24 months after original publication.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. Paul Dunne, 2017. "War, peace, and development," Economics of Peace and Security Journal, EPS Publishing, vol. 12(2), pages 21-31, October.
    2. Brauer Jurgen & Dunne John P, 2011. "On the Cost of Violence and the Benefit of Peace," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 1-12, January.
    3. Jurgen Brauer & J. Paul Dunne, 2011. "Macroeconomics and Violence," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
      • Jurgen Brauer & J Paul Dunne, 2010. "Macroeconomics and Violence," Working Papers 1003, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Civil war; greed versus grievance; social contract;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:epc:journl:v:4:y:2009:i:1:p:32-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael Brown, Managing Editor, EPSJ (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecaarea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.