IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v200y2024i3d10.1007_s11127-023-01067-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Violence against noncombatant civilians in revolutionary conflicts: A psychosocial choice model and empirical tests, 1960–2018

Author

Listed:
  • Charles H. Anderton

    (Professor Emeritus of Economics, College of the Holy Cross)

  • Jurgen Brauer

    (Chulalongkorn University)

Abstract

We offer a general theoretical model, and numerical simulations thereof, that reveal conditions under which a political leader chooses, or refrains from choosing, violence against noncombatant civilians as part of a contest with an opposing force. Employing augmented rational choice theory, which incorporates perspectives from psychology and sociology, the model involves a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) utility function over two goods, consumption and political control, with the latter in turn modeled on a CES production function involving three inputs, namely, direct fighting, intentional violence against civilians, and investments in group identity. When the model’s parameters are set to reflect conditions of revolutionary as opposed to non-revolutionary conflict, the model predicts that violence against civilians is particularly high. Using data from 1960 to 2018, the model’s prediction is well-supported by our empirical analyses.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles H. Anderton & Jurgen Brauer, 2024. "Violence against noncombatant civilians in revolutionary conflicts: A psychosocial choice model and empirical tests, 1960–2018," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(3), pages 627-647, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:200:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-023-01067-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-023-01067-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-023-01067-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-023-01067-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles Butcher & Benjamin E. Goldsmith & Sascha Nanlohy & Arcot Sowmya & David Muchlinski, 2020. "Introducing the Targeted Mass Killing Data Set for the Study and Forecasting of Mass Atrocities," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(7-8), pages 1524-1547, August.
    2. Joan Esteban & Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner, 2015. "Strategic Mass Killings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(5), pages 1087-1132.
    3. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1991. "The Technology of Conflict as an Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 130-134, May.
    4. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    5. Anderton Charles H. & Carter John R., 2015. "A New Look at Weak State Conditions and Genocide Risk," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1), pages 1-36, January.
    6. T. Clifton Morgan & Constantinos Syropoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2023. "Economic Sanctions: Evolution, Consequences, and Challenges," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 3-30, Winter.
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    8. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Directed Technical Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 781-809.
    9. Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner & Joan-Maria Esteban, 2015. "Strategic Mass Killings test," Working Papers 459, Barcelona School of Economics.
    10. William Easterly & Roberta Gatti & Sergio Kurlat, 2006. "Development, democracy, and mass killings," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 129-156, June.
    11. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    12. Jack Hirshleifer, 1989. "Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: Ratio vs. difference models of relative success," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 251-262, Springer.
    13. Charles Anderton & John Carter, 2005. "On Rational Choice Theory And The Study Of Terrorism," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 275-282.
    14. Dursun Peksen, 2019. "When Do Imposed Economic Sanctions Work? A Critical Review of the Sanctions Effectiveness Literature," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 635-647, September.
    15. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    16. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 137-163, January.
    17. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Explaining Rare Events in International Relations," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(3), pages 693-715, July.
    18. Charles H. Anderton & Jurgen Brauer, 2021. "Mass Atrocities and Their Prevention," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1240-1292, December.
    19. Yohe, Gary, 1984. "Constant elasticity of substitution production functions with three or more inputs : An approximation procedure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 15(1-2), pages 29-34.
    20. Carter, David B. & Signorino, Curtis S., 2010. "Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 271-292, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Coyne,Christopher J., 2020. "Defense, Peace, and War Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108724036, September.
    2. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," Working Papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    3. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Laughren, Kevin & Sheremeta, Roman, 2020. "War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 998-1013.
    4. Mahdi Fawaz & Donatella Gatti, 2025. "Social Unrest and Environmental Performance," Working Papers hal-05021482, HAL.
    5. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," CERDI Working papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    6. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    7. De Luca, Giacomo & Sekeris, Petros G. & Vargas, Juan F., 2018. "Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 205-221.
    8. Becker, Sascha O. & Mukand, Sharun & Yotzov, Ivan, 2022. "Persecution, pogroms and genocide: A conceptual framework and new evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Stefano DellaVigna & Attila Lindner & Balázs Reizer & Johannes F. Schmieder, 2017. "Reference-Dependent Job Search: Evidence from Hungary," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1969-2018.
    10. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    11. Freire, Danilo & Uzonyi, Gary, 2018. "What Drives State-Sponsored Violence?: Evidence from Extreme Bounds Analysis and Ensemble Learning Models," SocArXiv pzx3q, Center for Open Science.
    12. Rohner, Dominic & Mueller, Hannes & Schönholzer, David, 2017. "The Peace Dividend of Distance: Violence as Interaction Across Space," CEPR Discussion Papers 11897, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Friedhelm Hentschel, 2022. "Third-party intervention in secessions," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 65-82, March.
    14. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    15. repec:osf:socarx:pzx3q_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Remi Jedwab & Noel D. Johnson & Mark Koyama, 2019. "Negative shocks and mass persecutions: evidence from the Black Death," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 345-395, December.
    17. Damgaard, Mette Trier & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Nudging in education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 313-342.
    18. Rusch, Hannes, 2023. "The logic of human intergroup conflict:," Research Memorandum 014, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    19. Takanori Ida & Wenjie Wang, 2014. "A Field Experiment on Dynamic Electricity Pricing in Los Alamos:Opt-in Versus Opt-out," Discussion papers e-14-010, Graduate School of Economics Project Center, Kyoto University.
    20. Nobel Prize Committee, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    21. Ore Koren, 2017. "Means to an end: Pro-government militias as a predictive indicator of strategic mass killing1," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 34(5), pages 461-484, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Genocides; Mass atrocities; Violence against civilians; Atrocity prevention; Revolution; Comparative statics; Simulation; Regression analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • Q34 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts

    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:kap:pubcho:v:200:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-023-01067-8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.