Economic Development, Inequality, War, and State Violence

This paper focuses on a political economy of humanitarian emergencies, comprising a human-made crisis in which large numbers of people die from war and state violence. The article analyzes how economic decline, income inequality, pervasive rent seeking by ruling elites, a reduced surplus to threaten the survival income of a large portion of the population, a weakening state, and competition for control of mineral exports contribute to emergencies. Economic regress and political decay bring about relative deprivation or perception by influential social groups of injustice arising from a growing discrepancy between what they expect and get