Threats to Peace: Development and Conflict

对和平的威胁：发展与冲突

• 批准号: 1629370
• 负责人: Debraj Ray
• 金额: $ 34.62万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2021-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1629370&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Threats; Peace; Development; Conflict

Economic growth in countries undergoing structural transformations often involves a massive reallocation of resources, human and physical. Even if such growth is warranted from a long-term perspective, it can bring hardship in the short to medium run, and it can do so to individuals and groups who will never be compensated for their pains, in their lifetime. It is not surprising, then, that economic growth can be conflictual. This project explicitly brings an economic perspective to the theory and empirical study of social conflict, as opposed to simplistic pronouncements describing such conflict as a "clash of civilizations."Each of the three components of this project describes an interplay between economic and social characteristics that could lead to conflict. The first component studies how polarization across different ethnic groups can be exacerbated by economic inequality within each group. The second component studies whether small or large groups enter into conflict against the State, and howthese outcomes are influenced by the nature of the "conflict prize." The final component studies the connections between trade liberalization and violence.A central theme (and earlier finding) is that social conflict, while economically motivated, is often organized along ethnic lines: ethnically polarized societies are conflictual. The first project extends this research by interacting economic factors; specifically, within-group economic inequality, with polarization. Such inequality synthesizes two different aspects of the conflict process: the poor in a group supply their labor, the rich their finances. This perverse synergy of finance and labor is typically unavailable in class-based conflicts. It can make ethnic violence salient. The group-inequality/conflict nexus appears to find strong empirical support.The second project explores yet another aspect of the interaction between economics and ethnicity. It combines and reconciles two very different views of conflict -- one, the "tyranny of the majority," in which large groups impose their preferences on smaller groups, with another, the "Pareto-Olsen thesis," which argues that smaller groups are more likely to initiate lobbies or conflicts rather than larger groups. The two views are reconciled by varying the nature of conflict payoffs: private payoffs encourage smaller groups to be conflictual, while the opposite is true of public payoffs. These relationships are strongly visible in the data. Another previous theme is that economic growth might be highly conflictual in the near term, especially if that growth has been uneven across sectors or groups. The final project studies trade liberalization and gender-based violence in India. It shows that the reduction of tradebarriers -- especially non-tariff^ quotas -- has had a significant and positive impact on violence against women; specifically, on rape. The reduction of import quotas has created large sectoral movements of labor; the same is not true when tariffs change in the presence of quotas. The study connects liberalization with the dislocation of male labor and with the new entry of female labor, and links these processes to sexual violence.While sustained growth in the long term could finally tame conflict, there is every possibility that medium-term uneven growth, among groups or sectors, could inflame it. The intellectual core of this research marries traditional economic theory - rational individuals, strategic environments characterized by the methodological use of game theory, and equilibrium solution concepts - to generate and test predictions about one of the most significant phenomena in our lifetime: internal social conflict, often demarcated along ethnic lines.

正在经历结构转型的国家的经济增长往往涉及资源、人力和物力的大规模重新分配。即使从长期角度来看这种增长是有道理的，它也可能在中短期内带来困难，并且可能会给那些一生中永远不会因为他们的痛苦而得到补偿的个人和团体带来困难。因此，经济增长可能会产生冲突也就不足为奇了。该项目明确地将经济视角引入社会冲突的理论和实证研究，而不是简单地将此类冲突描述为“文明冲突”。该项目的三个组成部分中的每一个都描述了经济和社会特征之间的相互作用，可能会导致冲突。第一部分研究不同种族群体内部的经济不平等如何加剧不同种族群体之间的两极分化。第二部分研究小型或大型团体是否会与国家发生冲突，以及“冲突奖品”的性质如何影响这些结果。最后一部分研究贸易自由化与暴力之间的联系。一个中心主题（也是早期的发现）是，社会冲突虽然是出于经济动机，但往往是按照种族界限组织起来的：种族两极分化的社会是冲突的。第一个项目通过相互作用的经济因素扩展了这项研究；具体来说，群体内部的经济不平等，并且存在两极分化。这种不平等综合了冲突过程的两个不同方面：群体中的穷人提供劳动力，富人提供资金。这种金融与劳动力的反常协同作用在阶级冲突中通常是不存在的。它可以使种族暴力变得突出。群体不平等/冲突关系似乎找到了强有力的实证支持。第二个项目探讨了经济与种族之间相互作用的另一个方面。它结合并调和了两种截然不同的冲突观点——一种是“多数人的暴政”，其中大群体将自己的偏好强加于较小的群体，另一种是“帕累托-奥尔森理论”，认为较小的群体是比更大的团体更有可能发起游说或冲突。这两种观点通过改变冲突收益的性质得到调和：私人收益鼓励较小群体发生冲突，而公共收益则相反。这些关系在数据中清晰可见。之前的另一个主题是，短期内经济增长可能会高度冲突，特别是如果各个部门或群体的增长不平衡的话。最终项目研究印度的贸易自由化和基于性别的暴力。它表明，贸易壁垒的减少——特别是非关税配额——对暴力侵害妇女行为产生了重大而积极的影响；具体来说，关于强奸。进口配额的减少造成了劳动力的大规模部门流动；当关税在配额存在的情况下发生变化时，情况就不一样了。该研究将自由化与男性劳动力的错位和女性劳动力的新进入联系起来，并将这些过程与性暴力联系起来。虽然长期持续增长最终可以平息冲突，但中期增长不平衡的可能性很大，在团体或部门之间，可能会激怒它。这项研究的知识核心将传统的经济理论——理性的个人、以博弈论的方法论使用为特征的战略环境以及均衡解决方案概念——结合起来，生成并测试对我们一生中最重要的现象之一的预测：内部社会冲突、通常按种族界限划分。