EBP2 - Class Inequality and Civil War

Houle, Christian (2016). “Why class inequality breeds coups but not civil wars” Journal of Peace Research. 53(5), 680-693.

In this 2016 journal article, Christian Houle utilises a range of data from 128 developing countries between 1960 and 2008to support his argument that overwhelmingly, inequality between classes provides the grounds for coups to occur yet does not instigate political violence between the state and particular groups living within it, as would be seen in a civil war. Houle is very clear in his definition of the terms ‘coup’ and ‘civil war’ so that readers can easily understand the implications of the conclusions that he reaches as a result of this research.

Houle uses Powell and Thyne’s definition of a coup, which is: “illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive” (686 in Powell and Thyne 2011:252). He defines civil wars as “large domestic conflicts involving casualties and fighting between organised non-state actors and the state” (686). In order for an act of political violence to be considered a civil war, it must be carried out by politically organised groups with at least 1000 combatants on each side. Ultimately, he emphasises that “coups are staged by regime insiders, while civil wars require the participation of the masses”. Establishing these definitions gives context to the data that Houle has selected to support this argument and helps to make better sense of this piece whose sole focus is the differences between these acts of political violence.

Houle first discusses the broader relationship that exists between class inequality and political violence. He argues that there are both direct and indirect effects of inequality on political violence. He agrees with the arguments of “Marx and others”, saying that “inequality fuels distributive conflicts”, and that through this mechanism, “inequality fosters all forms of political violence”, and can therefore have a wide range of consequences (683). In the case of civil wars, these indirect and direct consequences of political violence essentially cancel each other out, making their impact on whether a civil war will occur “ambiguous” at best, according to Houle. However, in relation to coups, he argues that these effects work to reinforce one another. This is because the grievances that stem from class inequality among the citizens of a state create environments susceptible to violence, which state will often respond to by increasing the presence and power of military rule (686). To summarise, if there is political related violence occurring in a community, states will attempt to control this by increasing the strength of their military, thus giving them more power to stage a coup.

Houle’s argument is quite clearly structured and is relatively easy to understand as he breaks down each idea that he posits into a number of key points. He explains the three indicators of inequality that he has used when measuring the relationship between levels of inequality and the risk of/predisposition to civil war in a state (687). These are:

1.       “The capital share of the value added in the manufacturing sector”

2.       “The top 1%’s share of total income”

3.       “The net income Gini indexes”

Whilst the data obtained from these sources is extremely relevant to this topic, and helps to support Houle’s argument, there is obviously a bias created by only selecting three indicators to retrieve data from. Of course, there has to be limits to the extent of research, I think that it is important to be aware and critical of the possible limitations that might exist within this study because of these chosen resources.

Houle also concisely summarises the key points of his findings that provide the answers to his thesis. He concludes that:

1.       “inequality creates greater threats to rulers by fuelling political instability”

2.       “inequality reduces the use of structural coup-proofing”

3.       “structural coup-proofing increases the likelihood of civil war”

Although Houle emphasises that not all coups are caused by class inequality, he does make the point that statistically, his sources show that class inequality in developing countries provides “a source of support to coup plotters” (684). I found it interesting that whilst the implementation of structural coup proofing can help to reduce the chance of a coup occurring, its effect is not overwhelmingly significant (691).

There are some other limitations that exist within Houle’s work that readers should be critical of. The available information regarding coups and the procedures used to prevent them is obviously biased towards non-democracies due to the fact that historically coups and civil wars do not take place in fully-fledged democracies with well-established political institutions. Coup prevention measures are unlikely to be implemented in stable societies that are not as susceptible to political violence, and therefore those facing the threat of a coup are more likely to try and use preventative measures to stop this from occurring (691). Houle does acknowledge this, and is aware of these potential limitations in the data he is using to support his thesis.

Houle also focuses completely on class inequality, as this is the kind of inequality that he claims is the most easily measurable with data that is available. Therefore, this article focuses only on the inequalities that exist amongst the classes of general population, and not those that exist between what Houle defines as the “masses and elites”. He argues that this level of inequality has little effect on political violence. It is the inequalities within certain groups that he deems to be the most important. I think that it would be interesting to see the impacts that other kinds of inequality (such as economic, cultural biases, etc) would have on this data, and whether his argument would stand up in the context of a slightly different variable. Ultimately though, Houle achieves what he set out to and uses a reasonable range of evidence to successfully explain that reasons why political violence that results from inequality between classes allows coups to occur, but not civil wars.