IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9794.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distributional Disputes and Civil Conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Herschel I. Grossman

Abstract

Some polities are able to use constitutionally prescribed political processes to settle distributional disputes, whereas in other polities distributional disputes result in civil conflict. Theoretical analysis reveals that the following properties help to make it possible to design a self-enforcing constitution that can settle recurring distributional disputes between social classes without civil conflict: *Neither social class has a big advantage in civil conflict. *The expected incremental costs of civil conflict are large relative to aggregate appropriable economic rents. *Both social classes are greatly concerned about the future consequences of their current actions. Theoretical analysis also reveals that a self-enforcing constitution can require limitations on the prerogatives of winners of constitutional contests such that on average the distribution of appropriable economic rents under the constitution is not too favorable to one social class or the other and such that the outcome of a constitutional contest does not matter too much for the current distribution of economic rents.

Suggested Citation

  • Herschel I. Grossman, 2003. "Distributional Disputes and Civil Conflict," NBER Working Papers 9794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9794
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9794.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Enrico Spolaore, 1997. "On the Number and Size of Nations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1027-1056.
    2. Dimitriy Gershenson & Herschel I. Grossman, 1999. "Civil Conflict: Ended Or Never Ending?," Working Papers 99-31, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2001. "A Theory of Political Transitions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 938-963, September.
    4. Herschel I. Grossman, 2013. "Choosing Between Peace and War," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 765-783, November.
    5. Grossman, Herschel I, 1999. "Kleptocracy and Revolutions," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 267-283, April.
    6. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2001. "Social decision rules are not immune to conflict," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 59-67, March.
    7. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 416-416.
    8. Herschel Grossman, 2002. "Constitution or Conflict?," Working Papers 2002-01, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    9. Buchanan, James M & Faith, Roger L, 1987. "Secession and the Limits of Taxation: Toward a Theory of Internal Exit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 1023-1031, December.
    10. Avinash Dixit & Gene M. Grossman & Faruk Gul, 2000. "The Dynamics of Political Compromise," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 531-568, June.
    11. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kevin K. Tsui, 2010. "Resource Curse, Political Entry, And Deadweight Costs," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 471-497, November.
    2. Herschel I. Grossman, 2013. "Choosing Between Peace and War," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 765-783, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Herschel I. Grossman, 2003. "Distributional Disputes and Civil Conflict," Working Papers 2003-14, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    2. Herschel I. Grossman, 2003. "...and six hundred thousand men were dead," Working Papers 2003-13, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    3. Herschel I. Grossman, 2004. "Constitution or Conflict?," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(1), pages 29-42, February.
    4. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    5. Anesi, Vincent, 2012. "Secessionism and minority protection in an uncertain world," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 53-61.
    6. Anesi, Vincent, 2012. "Secessionism and minority protection in an uncertain world," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 53-61.
    7. Thierry Madiès & Grégoire Rota-Grasiozi & Jean-Pierre Tranchant & Cyril Trépier, 2018. "The economics of secession: a review of legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 154(1), pages 1-18, December.
    8. Trent J. MacDonald, 2019. "The Political Economy of Non-Territorial Exit," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 18871.
    9. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    10. Gregoire Rota Graziosi, 2003. "The theory of `Internal Exit', a comment on Buchanan and Faith (1987)," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 8(12), pages 1-6.
    11. Ennio E. Piano, 2019. "State capacity and public choice: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 289-309, January.
    12. Hausken, Kjell & Knutsen, John F., 2010. "An enabling mechanism for the creation, adjustment, and dissolution of states and governmental units," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-38.
    13. ., 2019. "Economic theory of non-territorial unbundling," Chapters, in: The Political Economy of Non-Territorial Exit, chapter 1, pages 14-38, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Federico Etro, 2003. "Globalization and Political Geography," CESifo Working Paper Series 986, CESifo.
    15. Roland Vaubel, 2013. "Secession in the European Union," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 288-302, October.
    16. Blankart Charles B. & Koester Gerrit B., 2007. "Theoretischer und empirischer wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt / Theoretical and empirical scientific progress: Eine kritische Analyse des Buches von Alesina und Spolaore: „The Size of Nations“ / A crit," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 58(1), pages 167-180, January.
    17. Kjell Hausken & John F. Knutsen, 2002. "The Birth, Adjustment and Death of States," Public Economics 0205004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Arzaghi, Mohammad & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2005. "Why countries are fiscally decentralizing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(7), pages 1157-1189, July.
    19. Adam Przeworski, 2005. "Democracy as an equilibrium," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 253-273, June.
    20. Wohlgemuth, Michael, 2011. "The boundaries of the state," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 11/3, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9794. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.