Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR ETHNIC VIOLENCE
- 2 EXPLAINING TOWN-LEVEL VARIATION IN HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 3 STATE CAPACITY EXPLANATIONS FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 4 THE CONSOCIATIONAL EXPLANATION FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 5 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 6 PARTY COMPETITION AND HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 7 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
- 8 DEMOCRACY AND ETHNIC VIOLENCE
- Appendix A Data Sources for Hindu-Muslim Riots
- Appendix B Data-Entering Protocol for Riot Database
- Appendix C Additional Results from Statistical Tables
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
3 - STATE CAPACITY EXPLANATIONS FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR ETHNIC VIOLENCE
- 2 EXPLAINING TOWN-LEVEL VARIATION IN HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 3 STATE CAPACITY EXPLANATIONS FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 4 THE CONSOCIATIONAL EXPLANATION FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 5 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 6 PARTY COMPETITION AND HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
- 7 THE ELECTORAL INCENTIVES FOR ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
- 8 DEMOCRACY AND ETHNIC VIOLENCE
- Appendix A Data Sources for Hindu-Muslim Riots
- Appendix B Data-Entering Protocol for Riot Database
- Appendix C Additional Results from Statistical Tables
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Summary
The State is held at ransom by bootleggers, smugglers and all such anti-social people. Many politicians are their close associates. A very considerable section of the police are on the pay-roll of these people. If those people want a disturbance to occur, a disturbance will occur. The State does not have the power to stop it.
Amal Datta, MP, 1986Social scientists often argue that we can explain variation in mass violence by focusing on the strength or weakness of state institutions. Neil Smelser's research on England, Mexico, and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, finds that periods in which police corruption was rife, training and equipment were poor, and local political interference high were invariably accompanied by large increases in riots. James Tong's study of violence in Ming China found that riots occurred most often in peripheral areas where the effectiveness of the Chinese state was weakest. More recently, studies of collective mobilization and violence in places as diverse as Los Angeles, the former Soviet Union, and the former state of Yugoslavia have identified state capacity, and the impact it has on individuals' decision about whether to participate in violence, as a crucial factor in determining where and when violence takes place. DiPasquale and Glaeser, for example, draw on standard economic price theory to explain the 1992 Los Angeles riots, concluding that rioting was greatest in those places where the financial gains were highest, and the state's capacity to punish individual rioters weakest.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Votes and ViolenceElectoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India, pp. 63 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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