Rural Grievances, Landholding Inequality, and Civil Conflict

Prominent theories stress the role of economic grievances in promoting political instability and conflict. They often point to inequality in the ownership of land as a primary source of such grievances. However, cross-national empirical studies fail to confirm a link between unequal distributions of land and civil war. These findings, I contend, stem from problems in theorizing and measuring rural inequality. This article distinguishes between the effects of total landholding inequality and the concentration of land ownership on conflict. Total landholding inequality, which includes landlessness, captures economic grievances in the countryside and is positively associated with conflict. Gini coefficients of landholding concentration capture both grievances and landowners’ capacity to organize as rebels and a repressive rural elite. The relationship between landholding Ginis and conflict is shaped like an inverted “U”: inequality correlates with an increasing likelihood of conflict, but as the concentration of landholdings reaches very high levels, the likelihood of conflict decreases with the formation of a small repressive class of landowners. Results of cross-national regressions—using new data on total landholding inequality and the concentration of landholdings—confirm these predictions. My findings provide evidence that landholding inequality is an important underlying cause of civil war.主流理论强调经济不满在催生政治动荡与冲突中的核心作用。此类理论常将土地占有不平等视为这类不满情绪的首要源头。然而，跨国实证研究并未证实土地分配不均与内战之间存在关联。笔者认为，上述结论的局限性源于乡村不平等的理论建构与量化测度存在缺陷。本文区分了总土地占有不平等与土地占有集中度对冲突的不同影响：包含无地群体在内的总土地占有不平等，反映了乡村地区的经济不满情绪，且与冲突发生概率呈正相关；而土地占有集中度的基尼系数，同时涵盖了不满情绪与土地所有者组织反叛、形成压制性乡村精英阶层的能力。土地占有基尼系数与冲突之间的关系呈倒U型：土地不平等程度越高，冲突发生概率越大，但当土地占有集中度达到极高水平时，由于形成了规模极小的压制性土地所有者阶层，冲突发生概率反而会下降。借助总土地占有不平等与土地占有集中度的全新数据集开展的跨国回归分析结果，验证了上述理论预测。本研究结果证实，土地占有不平等是内战发生的重要深层诱因。