Lets Talk about “Why Class Inequality Breeds Coups but not Civil Wars” by Christan Houle.

This article by Christain Houle came out in 2016 in the Journal of Peace Research. The main issue of the paper is outlined in the first sentence of the paper, “Does inequality increase the risk of civil war?”. The inequality that Houle looks at in the study is the inequality between classes, he separates these classes in to the economic elites and the masses or general public.Houle outlines a few things that he believes can explain the cause of the effect that inequality has on the likelihood of coups and civil wars against the regime of a state, that inequality adds power to political instability, that inequality makes it less likely that a state can effectively coup-proof, and finally that coup proofing increases the possibility of civil war breaking out.

Christian Houle talks of the idea that in countries with high levels of inequality are more likely to have coups, riots, demonstrations and revolutions, however the link between inequality and civil war are not as clear with the things he looked at to find the link with various other forms of political upheaval. Houle also critiques other scholars that look into this topic, in many aspects that will be discussed later on, but the first time he critiques the previous literature is in the fact that he says that scholars focus too much on one or the other of the two main motivations of possible civil war. The two motivations the Houle and many other scholars cite for civil war, are classified as greed and grievances, greed used in place of opportunity and grievances in place of opportunity.

One of the main points that Christan Houle looks at and talks about, it the impact that inequality has on the military. Arguing that the impact of inequality on the military is multifaceted. This first point he brings up is the fact that inequality impacts the structure of the military, saying that unequal regimes tend to have stronger / larger military regimes because the leadership of the regime sees the fact that with more class inequality in society there is a higher propensity for violence against the regime and its institutions, and that a stronger military is better to use to suppress uprising like civil wars. But Houle also discusses the fact that a larger military is harder to control. With a larger military there is less opportunity for those in the military to receive benefits that would make them more likely to be loyal to the regime, But it also makes it harder for a leader to organise the military in a way that makes it difficult for military coups to form. An example of Bolivia between 1950 - 2006 is given to show what happens when there are class conflicts with a large and strong military, in Bolivia at that time there were 12 attempts at coups 9 of which succeeded. Due to the fact that military personnel are also themselves citizens of these regimes it is not unsurprising that when there is a class struggle and the military is large and strong, with blame be placed on the head of the regime, and the regime itself that the military rises up an attempt a coup. It is also mentioned that when a military is coup-proffed, by dividing it up and separating each section from the other, that they are less effective in fighting, possibly due to the fact that they would not be able to communicate as easily with each other, which most certainly would be a dilemma for regime leaders to decide which is more important. Houle believes through his preliminary research and b=observations that inequality brings up the risk of coups but it does not affect the risk of civil wars, the only connection that was observed was the fact that of correlation between coup-proofing and civil wars, but not strong enough to say there is very much to any sway at all.

This article also looks at data in regards to the correlation between class inequality and coups and civil wars. This data is from 1960 through to 2008 and does not include western Eruopean countries, the United States, Canada, New Zealans, and Australia, although Houle says that the results do not change when these countries are added, that poses the question as to why he did not leave them in the data if they made no impact on the drawable conclusion, so that a wider range of countries and political regimes can be examined to gain a better understanding of the effects of class inequality. Houle clearly out lines a few rules for what defines a civil war, simplified they are, that there has to be 1000 deaths over the civil war, and that there must be 100 deaths a year during the civil war. There are a few other sub rules under these two but these two are the basics. One useful thing that Houle say that can be used to clarify throughout the course the very basic difference between coups and civil wars, coups are started by the insiders if the regime in the military, where as civil wars are started by the general public / the masses. 

Houle comes to the conclusion that inequality make coups more likely but there is little impact on the likelihood of a civil war breaking out. 

This article adds to a small amount of discussion on this topic, however as Houel say throughout this article, this study looks at class inequality, where others do not look solely class inequality if they even look at it at all.

In the end of this discussion and summary, it is clear that Houle believes that inequality does not have a strong effect on civil war at all, but a strong effect on the likelihood of coups. This reading is very repetitive in the fact that Houle makes the same point repeatedly, in different words, and it takes a bit of thinking to properly understand what is being said at times. However the outcome of this study is useful and interesting. To better know what happens when there is class inequality is not only useful for regimes, to know how to prevent coups and civil wars, it is also useful for scholars to look at the possible outcome of regimes, democratic or not, when there is political upheaval around class. 

Bibliography

Houle, Christian. “Why Class Inequality Breeds Coups But Not Civil Wars.” Journal of Peace Research vol 53, (2016): 680 - 695.