Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:47:22.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Psychological Factors in Civil Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Ted Gurr
Ted Gurr
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access

Extract

Until recently many political scientists tended to regard violent civil conflict as a disfigurement of the body politic, neither a significant nor a proper topic for their empirical inquiries. The attitude was in part our legacy from Thomas Hobbes's contention that violence is the negation of political order, a subject fit less for study than for admonition. Moreover, neither the legalistic nor the institutional approaches that dominated traditional political science could provide much insight into group action that was regarded by definition as illegal and the antithesis of institutionalized political life.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , January 1968 , pp. 245 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Forster, Arnold, “Violence on the Fanatical Left and Right,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science CCCLXIV (March 1966), 142Google Scholar.

2 For example, Stone, Lawrence, “Theories of Revolution,” World Politics xviii (January 1966), 159–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, advances the curious argument that collective violence generally cannot be the object of useful theorizing because it is at the same time both pervasive and somehow peripheral.

3 The emphasis on processes is evident in the major theoretical analyses of the “classic” revolutions, including Edwards, Lyford P., The Natural History of Revolutions (Chicago 1927)Google Scholar; Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York 1938)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pettee, George S., The Process of Revolution (New York 1938)Google Scholar; Gottschalk, Louis R., “Causes of Revolution,” American Journal of Sociology L (July 1944), 1–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hopper, Rex D., “The Revolutionary Process: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Revolutionary Movements,” Social Forces xxvm (March 1950), 270–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 A great many counts of the incidence of civil strife events have recently been reported. Harry Eckstein reports 1,632 “internal wars” in the period 1946–1959 in “On the Etiology of Internal Wars,” History and Theory, iv, No. 2 (1965), 133–63Google Scholar. Rummel and Tanter counted more than 300 “domestic conflict events” per year during the years 1955–1960, including an annual average of 13 guerrilla wars and 21 attempted overthrows of government; see Tanter, Raymond, “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior Within Nations, 1955–60: Turmoil and Internal War,” Peace Research Society Papers, iii (1965), 159–84Google Scholar. Most important to the argument that civil strife is a single universe of events are results of Rudolph RummePs factor analysis of 236 socioeconomic and political variables, including nine domestic conflict measures, for a large number of nations. Eight of the conflict measures—e.g., number of riots, of revolutions, of purges, of deaths from group violence—are strongly related to a single factor but not significantly related to any others, strong empirical evidence that they comprise a distinct and interrelated set of events. See Dimensionality of Nations Project: Orthogonally Rotated Factor Tables for 236 Variables, Department of Political Science, Yale University (New Haven, July 1964)Google Scholar, mimeographed.

5 The “French Revolution” was a series of events that would now be characterized as urban demonstrations and riots, peasant uprisings, and a coup d'état. It is called a revolution in retrospect and by virtue of the Due de Liancourt's classic remark to Louis XVI. The American Revolution began with a series of increasingly violent urban riots and small-scale terrorism that grew into a protracted guerrilla war.

6 The universe of concern, civil violence, is formally defined as all collective, nongovernmental attacks on persons or property, resulting in intentional damage to them, that occur within the boundaries of an autonomous or colonial political unit. The terms “civil strife,” “violent civil conflict,” and “civil violence” are used synonymously in this article. The universe subsumes more narrowly defined sets of events such as “internal war,” which Harry Eckstein defines as “any resort to violence within a political order to change its constitution, rulers, or policies” (in “On the Etiology of Internal Wars,” 133), and “revolution,” typically defined in terms of violently accomplished fundamental change in social institutions.

7 Bryant Wedge argues (in a personal communication) that much human aggression, including some civil strife, may arise from a threat-fear-aggression sequence. Leonard Berkowitz, however, proposes that this mechanism can be subsumed by frustration-aggression theory, the inferred sequence being threat (anticipated frustration)-fear-anger-aggression, in Aggression: A Social Psychological Analysis (New York 1962)Google Scholar, chap. 2. It may be conceptually useful to distinguish the two mechanisms; it nonetheless appears likely that most variables affecting the outcome of the frustration-aggression sequence also are operative in the postulated threat-aggression sequence.

8 Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression (New York 1966), xiiGoogle Scholar.

9 Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Riviere, Joan (London 1930)Google Scholar; Lorenz, chaps. 13, 14. Freud's instinctual interpretation of aggression is advanced in his later works; his early view was that aggression is a response to frustration of pleasure-seeking behavior. For a review and critique of other instinct theories of aggression, see Berkowitz, chap. 1.

10 Nieburg, H. L., “The Threat of Violence and Social Change,” American Political Science Review LVI (December 1962), 870Google Scholar.

11 A characteristic study is Bandura, Albert and Walters, Richard H., Social Learning and Personality Development (New York 1963)Google Scholar. For a commentary on instrumental aggression, see Berkowitz, esp. 30–32, 182–83, 201–2.

12 Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change (Boston 1966)Google Scholar, 12, 13, italics added.

13 Parsons, Talcott, “Some Reflections on the Place of Force in Social Process,” in Eckstein, Harry, ed., Internal War: Problems and Approaches (New York 1964), 34–35Google Scholar.

14 Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 4Google Scholar.

15 P. 161.

16 The most influential and systematic statement of the theory is Dollard, John and others, Frustration and Aggression (New Haven 1939)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two important recent syntheses of the evidence are Berkowitz, Aggression, and Yates, Aubrey J., Frustration and Conflict (New York 1962)Google Scholar. Also see Berkowitz, Leonard, “The Concept of Aggressive Drive: Some Additional Considerations,” in , Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Psychology, Vol. II (New York 1965), 307–22Google Scholar.

17 Maier, Norman R. F., Frustration: The Study of Behavior Without a Goal (New York 1949), 92–115Google Scholar, 159–61. Maier postulates a frustration threshold that may open the way to any of four classes of “goal-less” behavior of which aggression is only one. His findings have not been releated adequately to the body of research on the frustration-aggression relationship. One can suggest, however, that the nonaggressive responses—fixation, regression, and apparent resignation—can be treated as more or less innate responses in a response hierarchy which are resorted to in the absence of aggression-evoking cues.

18 Smelser, Neil J., Theory of Collective Behavior (New York 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Wilier, David and Zollschan, George K., “Prolegomenon to a Theory of Revolutions,” in Zollschan, George K. and Hirsch, Walter, eds., Explorations in Social Change (Boston 1964), 125–51Google Scholar.

20 Ridker, Ronald G., “Discontent and Economic Growdi,” Economic Development and Cultural Change xi (October 1962), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Davies, James C., “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review XXVII (February 1962), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Aggression,” Journal of Peace Research, ii, No. 2 (1964), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 , Ivo K. and Feierabend, Rosalind L., in “Aggressive Behaviors Within Polities, 1948–1962: A Cross-National Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution x (September 1966), 249–71Google Scholar, have formally equated political instability with aggressive behavior and have derived and tested several hypotheses about stability from frustration-aggression theory. They have attempted no general theoretical synthesis, however.

24 The term “instigating” is adapted from the behavioristic terminology of Dollard and others. Instigating variables determine the strength of instigation, i.e., stimulus or motivation, to a particular kind of behavior. Mediating variables refer to intervening conditions, internal or external to the actors, which modify the expression of that behavior.

25 The phrase “relative deprivation” was first used systematically in Samuel A. Stouffer and others, The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life, Vol. I (Princeton 1949), to denote the violation of expectations. J. Stacy Adams reviews the concept's history and some relevant evidence and suggests that feelings of injustice intervene between the condition of relative deprivation and responses to it, in “Inequity in Social Exchange,” in Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Psychology, 267–300. The “injustice” aspect is implicit in m y definition and use of relative deprivation as perceived discrepancy between what people think they will get and what they believe they are entitled to. Th e Stouffer concept has been related to levels of social satisfaction and to anomie, but has not, so far as I know, been associated with the discontent-anger-rage continuum in the frustration-aggression relationship.

26 Aberle, David F., “A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory,” in Thrupp, Sylvia L., ed., Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study (The Hague 1962), 209–14Google Scholar. Bert Hoselitz and An n Willner similarly distinguish between expectations, regarded by the individual as “what is rightfully owed to him,” and aspirations, which represent “that which he would like to have but has not necessarily had or considered his due,” in “Economic Development, Political Strategies, and American Aid,” in Kaplan, Morton A., ed., The Revolution in World Politics (New York 1962), 363Google Scholar.

27 Pp. 175–78.

28 Aberle, 210.

29 The Feierabends use the comparable term “systemic frustration” to describe the balance between “social want satisfaction” and “social want formation.”

30 Hadley Cantril's work offers examples, especially The Pattern of Human Concerns (New Brunswick 1965)Google Scholar.

31 This approach is exemplified by the Feierabends' work and by Russett, Bruce M., “Inequality and Instability: The Relation of Land Tenure to Politics,” World Politics xvi (April 1964), 442–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 The basic postulate of Dollard and others is that “the occurrence of aggressive behavior always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression” (p. 1). It is evident from context and from subsequent articles that this statement was intended in more qualified fashion.

33 Ibid., 28.

34 Tilly, Charles, The Vendee (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)Google Scholar.

35 Reuben de Hoyos, personal communication.

36 Gregory Massell, “The Strategy of Social Change and the Role of Wome n in Soviet Central Asia: A Case Study in Modernization and Control,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1966.

37 For this kind of approach, see Lerner, Daniel, “Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization: A Set of Considerations,” in Pye, Lucian W., ed., Communications and Political Development (Princeton 1963), 330–35Google Scholar.

38 This general statement of theory is concerned with specification of variables and their effects, not with their content in specific cases; hence the conditions that determine the levels of expectation and changes in those levels are not treated here, nor are the conditions that affect perceptions about value capabilities. For some attempts to generalize about such conditions see Ted Gurr, “The Genesis of Violence: A Multivariate Theory of Civil Strife,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1965, esp. chaps. 6–8. For empirical evaluation or application of the theory, it is of course necessary to evaluate in some way levels of expectation in the population (s) studied. Some approaches to evaluation are illustrated in Ted Gurr with Ruttenberg, Charles, The Conditions of Civil Violence: First Tests of a Causal Model, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 28 (Princeton 1967)Google Scholar, and Ted Gurr, “Explanatory Models for Civil Strife Using Aggregate Data,” a paper read at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1967.

39 See Berkowitz, Aggression, 53–54.

40 Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer (New York 1951), 27–28Google Scholar.

41 Young, Compare Crawford, Politics in the Congo (Princeton 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 13, with commentaries on the Kwilu and Stanleyville rebellions, such as Fox, Renée C. and others, “‘The Second Independence’: A Case Study of the Kwilu Rebellion in the Congo,” Comparative Studies in Society and History viii (October 1965), 78–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weiss, Herbert, Political Protest in the Congo (Princeton 1967)Google Scholar.

42 See, among many other works, Lefebvre, Georges, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton 1947)Google Scholar, Part II.

43 Value expectations are defined above in terms of the value positions to which men believe they are justifiably entitled; the discussion here assumes that men may also regard as justifiable some types of interference with those value positions.

44 Pastore, Nicholas, “The Role of Arbitrariness in the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology XLVII (July 1952), 728–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kregarman, John J. and Worchel, Philip, “Arbitrariness of Frustration and Aggression,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology LXIII (July 1961), 183–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The argument is that people comply “to gain both the symbolic rewards of governmental action and the actual rewards with which government originally associated itself” and rationalize compliance with “the feeling that the regime is a morally appro priate agent of control...” (Merelman, Richard M., “Learning and Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review, LX [September 1966], 551)Google Scholar. The argument applies equally well to compliance, including acceptance of deprivation, with the demands of other social institutions.

48 Rostow, Walt W., British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 1948)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

47 Rudé, George, “Prices, Wages, and Popular Movements in Paris During the French Revolution,” Economic History Review, vi (1954), 246–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (New York 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 7.

48 Hovland, Carl and Sears, Robert, “Minor Studies in Aggression, VI: Correlation of Lynchings with Economic Indices,” Journal of Psychology, ix (1940), 301–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (New York 1959), 160Google Scholar.

50 “Aggressive Behaviors Within Polities.”

51 Hamblin, Robert L. and others, “The Interference-Aggression Law?” Sociometry, xxvi (1963), 190–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Russett, Bruce M. and others, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven 1963), 97–100Google Scholar.

53 There is a threshold effect with reference to physical well-being. If life itself is the value threatened and the threat is imminent, the emoional response tends to be fear or panic; once the immediate threat is past, anger against the source of threat tends to manifest itself again. See n. 7 above, and Berkowitz, Aggression, 42–46.

54 Berkowitz, Leonard, “Repeated Frustrations and Expectations in Hostility Arousal,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology LX (May 1960), 422–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 See, for example, Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe 1958)Google Scholar.

56 Brogan, Denis W., The Price of Revolution (London 1951), 34Google Scholar.

57 Cohn, Norman R. C., The Pursuit of the Millennium, 2nd ed. rev. (New York 1961), 315Google Scholar.

58 Kling, Merle, “Toward a Theory of Power and Political Instability in Latin America,” Western Political Quarterly ix (March 1956), 21–35Google Scholar.

59 Ridker, 15; Olson, Mancur Jr., “Growth as a Destabilizing Force,” Journal of Economic History xxiii (December 1963), 550–51Google Scholar.

60 Gurr with Ruttenberg.

61 Dollard and others, 34.

62 For summaries of findings, see Walters, Richard H., “Implications of Laboratory Studies of Aggression for the Control and Regulation of Violence,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science CCCLXIV (March 1966), 60–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McNeil, Elton D., “Psychology and Aggression,” fournal of Conflict Resolution iii (September 1959), 225–31Google Scholar.

63 Pp. 231–36, 261–68, 332, 365–79.

64 Johnson, Chalmers, Revolution and the Social System (Stanford 1964), 16–17Google Scholar.

65 Janos, Andrew, The Seizure of Power: A Study of Force and Popular Consent, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 16 (Princeton 1964), 5Google Scholar.

68 See, for example, Dahlke, H. O., “Race and Minority Riots: A Study in the Typology of Violence,” Social Forces xxx (May 1952), 419–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Paret, Peter and Shy, John W., Guerrillas in the 1960's, rev. ed. (New York 1964), 34–35Google Scholar.

68 Frustration, passim.

69 Walton, Jennifer G., “Correlates of Coerciveness and Permissiveness of National Political Systems: A Cross-National Study,” M.A. thesis, San Diego State College, 1965Google Scholar.

70 Douglas Bwy, “Governmental Instability in Latin America: The Preliminary Test of a Causal Model of the Impulse to 'Extra-Legal' Change,” paper read at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, 1966.

71 Lasswell, Harold and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry (New Haven 1950), 265–66Google Scholar.

72 “Some Reflections on the Place of Force.”

73 Thibaut, J. W. and Coules, J., “The Role of Communication in the Reduction of Interpersonal Hostility,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XLVII (October 1952). 770–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 See Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston 1957)Google Scholar.

75 Cohen, Arthur R. and others, “Commitment to Social Deprivation and Verbal Conditioning,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology LXVII (November 1963), 410–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Miller, Neal E., “Theory and Experiment Relating Psychoanalytic Displacement to Stimulus-Response Generalization,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology XLIII (April 1948), 155–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Aggression, chap. 6.

78 See n. 48 above.

79 Rudé, The Crowd in History, chap. 5. The high levels of verbal aggression directed against the employers suggest that displacement was involved, not a perception of the machines rather than employers as sources of deprivation. In the Luddite riots, fear of retribution for direct attacks on the owners, contrasted with the frequent lack of sanctions against attacks on the machines, was the probable cause of object generalization. In the Madagascar and Angola cases structural and conceptual factors were responsible: the African rebels were not accessible to attack but local Africans were seen as like them and hence as potential or clandestine rebels.

80 Some such evidence is summarized in Berkowitz, “The Concept of Aggressive Drive,” 325–27.

81 A critical and qualifying review of evidence to this effect is Abney, F. Glenn and Hill, Larry B., “Natural Disasters as a Political Variable: The Effect of a Hurricane on an Urban Election,” American Political Science Review LX (December 1966), 974–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Kornhauser, 161. For interview evidence on the motives of protest voting, see Cantril, Hadley, The Politics of Despair (New York 1958)Google Scholar.

83 Representative studies are Cohn; Fernandez, James W., “African Religious Movements: Types and Dynamics,” Journal of Modern African Studies, ii, No. 4 (1964), 531–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lanternari, Vittorio, The Religions of the Oppressed (New York 1963)Google Scholar.

84 Summarized in Walters.

85 Berkowitz, Leonard, “Aggressive Cues in Aggressive Behavior and Hostility Catharsis,” Psychological Review LXXI (March 1964), 104–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation from 106.

86 Rudé, The Crowd in History, 19–45.

87 Hobsbawm, E. J., Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels, 2nd ed. (Glencoe 1959), 63–64Google Scholar.

88 Chap. 5.

89 P. 31.

90 Bon, Gustave Le, The Psychology of Revolution (London 1913)Google Scholar; Sorokin, Pitirim, The Sociology of Revolutions (Philadelphia 1925)Google Scholar.

91 Representative studies include French, J. R. P. Jr., “The Disruption and Cohesion of Groups,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology xxxvi (July 1941), 361–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pepitone, A. and Reichling, G., “Group Cohesiveness and the Expression of Hostility,” Human Relations, viii, No. 3 (1955), 327–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stotland, Ezra, “Peer Groups and Reactions to Power Figures,” in Cartwright, Dorwin, ed., Studies in Social Power (Ann Arbor 1959), 53–68Google Scholar.

92 Pp. 272–75, quotation from 273.

93 Kerr, Clark and Siegel, Abraham, “The Isolated Mass and the Integrated Individual: An International Analysis of the Inter-Industry Propensity to Strike,” in Korn-hauser, Arthur and others, eds., Industrial Conflict (New York 1954), 189–212Google Scholar.

94 Meier, Norman C. and others, “An Experimental Approach to the Study of Mob Behavior,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology xxxvi (October 1941), 506–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Wada, George and Davies, James C., “Riots and Rioters,” Western Political Quarterly x (December 1957), 864–74Google Scholar.

95 See Walters; Polansky, Norman and others, “An Investigation of Behavioral Contagion in Groups,” Human Relations, iii, No. 3 (1950), 319–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Berkowitz, Leonard and Geen, Russell G., “Film Violence and the Cue Properties of Available Targets,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology iii (June 1966), 525–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Rudé, The Crowd in History; Mendras, Henri and Tavernier, Yves, “Les Manifestations de juin 1961,” Revue française des sciences politiques xii (September 1962), 647–71Google Scholar.

97 Representative typologies are proposed by Johnson, Revolution and the Social System, 26–68; Rummel, Rudolph J., “Dimensions of Conflict Behavior Within and Between Nations,” Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, viii (1963), 25–26Google Scholar; and Harry Eckstein, “Internal Wars: A Taxonomy,” unpubl. (1960).

98 Two summary articles on these factor analyses are Rummel, Rudolph J., “A Field Theory of Social Action With Application to Conflict Within Nations,” Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, x (1965), 183–204Google Scholar; and Tanter. What I call internal war is referred to in these sources as subversion; I label conspiracy what these sources call revolution. My terminology is, I believe, less ambiguous and more in keeping with general scholarly usage.

99 Seton-Watson, Hugh, “Twentieth Century Revolutions,” Political Quarterly XXII (July 1951), 258Google Scholar.

100 For example, it has been used by Bryant Wedge to analyze and compare interview materials gathered in the study of two Latin American revolutions, in “Student Participation in Revolutionary Violence: Brazil, 1964, and Dominican Republic, 1965,” a paper read at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1967.

101 Studies based on this theoretical model and using cross-national aggregate data include Ted Gurr, New Error-Compensated Measures for Comparing Nations: Some Correlates of Civil Strife, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 25 (Princeton 1966); Gurr with Ruttenberg; Gurr, “Explanatory Models for Civil Strife”; and Gurr, “Why Urban Disorders? Perspectives From the Comparative Study of Civil Strife,” American Behavioral Scientist (forthcoming).