Revisiting the links between economic inequality and political violence: The role of social mobilization

This paper revisits the age-old question of how economic inequalities may affect the emergence of political violence. Recent findings from three distinct bodies of literature suggest that this relationship is shaped by the forms of social mobilization inequalities (may) generate. The paper reviews this new evidence and outlines two conditions under which social mobilization in unequal societies may result in either non-violent or violent collective action and, ultimately, in violent conflict. The first condition is the level of social cooperation between different social groups that are formed during the process of social mobilization. The second is the efficacy of collective action to drive change, which is in turn shaped by the ability of individuals within groups to coordinate their actions. Forms of social mobilization become violent when antagonism is the dominant form of social interaction between different social groups in unequal societies and when each of these social groups exhibits high levels of internal coordination. This framework raises new research questions and policy implications.