London School of Economics; Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University; and Canadian Institute for
Advanced Research
Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University; London School of Economics; and Canadian Institute for
Advanced Research
Abstract
This article offers a unified approach for studying political violence whether it emerges as repression or civil war. We formulate
a model where an incumbent or opposition can use violence to maintain or acquire power to study which political and economic
factors drive one-sided or two-sided violence (repression or civil war). The model predicts a hierarchy of violence states
from peace via repression to civil war; and suggests a natural empirical approach. Exploiting only within-country variation
in the data, we show that violence is associated with shocks that can affect wages and aid. As in the theory, these effects
are only present where political institutions are noncohesive.
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