Do working men rebel? A call for papers.

[davidbfpo]

During 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland the UK spent a huge amount on subsidies to all sorts of activity, including the non-state security sector. I cannot now recall the unemplyment figures, but IIRC there was at the start in 1969 higher unemployment in the Catholic / Republican ghettoes than Protestant or Loyalist areas.

Eventually one fix that appeared to work was state funding of "community projects" and an "army" of community workers. I have little doubt this meant funding paramilitaries at times, but as both "sides" had their 'snout in the trough" few complained.

The "projects" often involved IIRC sports halls and other facilities, which were rarely inter-communal.

I am sure there are learned articles on this factor, none on my radar.

Today in the UK the impact of unemployment upon radicalisation is sometimes debated in public, although IIRC those who are radicalised and are caught in acts of violence are more often employed. My own opinion is that high unemployment may contribute, making it easier for an individual to believe he is worthless and only the 'cause' provides an answer. In one area often the focus of CT and non-CT responses nearly two years ago youth unemployment was 55%; allowing for changes since then and the UK practice of fiddling the figures I would not be surprised if was 75%. Weirdly the local buoyant economic factor is drug dealing.

[Adam L]

According to Dave Grossman (author of On Combat and On Killing), there is a corellation between sex and violence (killing, watching others being killed, thinking of killing, thinking of being killed, etc.).

Yes, there is a correlation between sex and killing, but applying it in this case is a bit of a stretch. Also, Grossman perverts the whole sex and violence relationship. (I can't go into detail on this as I haven't read any of his works in a while.) It really is more of a sex and death issue. (This isn't the best article, but it will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.)

If you think about it, the whole thing might be an ancient, hard-wired species survival mechanism: take a life, create a life.

Regards

Mike

As far as evolution is concerned, sex, like food and water, is an essential. Just as we will kill for food and water, we will kill for sex. In this case the equation is more:

Money = Sex

Job = Money

Therefore

No Job = No Sex

Then

No Sex = Frustrations

Rebellion = Frustration venting

Therefore

No Job = Rebellion

Edited: I just remembered this: for a fascinating intro to sex and death, you can either watch the David Cronenberg movie "Crash," (not for viewing by younger audiences) or the J G Ballard novel of the same title on which it is based.

Adam L

[Meh]

Being sexually frustrated is definitely a factor in some way. It's interesting to me that Nidal Malik Hasan would go around mosques trawling for a wife. Many Muslims in America - especially those well integrated enough to serve in the military - have no qualms about dating. Nor do many Muslims outside America.

But no, Hasan was an all-or-nothing, "if you like it, you should put a ring on it" kind of guy. Here's a guy who's totally afraid of going on an unsuccessful date. Totally afraid of rejection. Perhaps even afraid of a woman wielding power over his destiny (in this case, whether he gets to marry her). Fundamentally insecure.

But can you do something about sexual frustration? Especially on the societal level (and these problems - men with weak egos - are particularly strong in societies where women are marginalised)?

Nah. Just something you have to factor in and live with it.

[M-A Lagrange]

Well, I would support Marct assumption/assertion about marriage.
In all failed State post conflict and conflict context I have been working in the question of marriage and youth has been at the center of the cause of violence.
In Liberia, the 80 revolution happened after the raw material world crisis. As Firestone was leaving the place, young men could not find any work and therefore could not afford the dot. So they could not marry and then it created (with time) conditions for civil war. (the help of C. Taylor also).
About this, I would recommand Stephen Ellis book, the mask ofanarchy. It explores and explains in details how Liberia went fromalmost peaceful place to one of the worst african war (Liberia used to say that liberia was a piece of hell the devil forgot on hearth...).
I am facing the same problem in Suth Sudan. While elections are also a source of conflict, the youth unemployment creates the conditions for violence.

That said, I am not sure that unemployed men only do rebel. Most of the european resistants (they did rebel at their time) used to have a formal job as a cover.
Mao states that the partisan has to be integrated into the villagers life and participate to daily work.
The main question would be what could possibly push an established man or woman (with a family, a job, a social position...) to take arms and run to the bush.

Also, the definition of rebel could be interresting. Is a supporter providing intelligence and logistic a rebel?

Unemployed people are more prone to rebel as they see rebellion a way to be integrated into the society and then get, through insurgent engagement, the social recognition they do not get through normal life. (especially men, that's personal opinion).

Socio-economical context is also important. Economical disruption are often the core source of social disruption leading to violence. The economical causes of rebelion and insurgencies in failed States are deeply linked with the problematic of development and ressources sharing. See the war economist and black economy authors.

And finally, taking the example of LRA, Sierra Leone, Liberia or DRC, the rebels have found a solution to the question of do working men rebel: they abduct children, brainwash them with drugs and extrem violence to let them with the only possibilty to join them. (Once you've kill your brothers and father, raped your mother and sisters... Basically the job question seems meaningless).

[MikeF]

For some background on this topic, I would recommend that one starts with the Ted Gurr's Why Men Rebel. For a young social scientist or military practisioner, this book is a classic that begins to attempt to address the question.

For the Cliffnotes version, just read this review.

This is a classic book that explores why people engage in political violence (riots, rebellion, coups, etc.) and how regimes respond. Though written long before the current rash of insurgencies, it has a lot to say about what is happening in the early 21st century.

In this book, Gurr examines the psychological frustration-aggression theory which argues that the primary source of the human capacity for violence is the frustration-aggression mechanism. Frustration does not necessarily lead to violence, Gurr says, but when it is sufficiently prolonged and sharply felt, it often does result in anger and eventually violence.

Gurr explains this hypothesis with his term "relative deprivation," which is the discrepancy between what people think they deserve, and what they actually think they can get. Gurr's hypothesis, which forms the foundation of the book, is that: "The potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity."(p.24)

It is noteworthy that Gurr does not look to a more absolute or objective indicator of deprivation as the source of political violence. People can become inured to a bad state of affairs, even one that offers so little access to life-sustaining resources that members of the group are starving or dying of remediable diseases or exposure.

If, however, there is a significant discrepancy between what they think they deserve and what they think they will get, there is a likelihood of rebellion. Gurr posits this to be the case even if there is no question that their basic needs will be met. The first situation may be a desperate one, but it is the second that is frustrating. And, according to Gurr, just as frustration produces aggressive behavior on the part of an individual, so too does relative deprivation predict collective violence by social groups.

A number of other variables influence the use of violence as well, for example the culture, the society, and the political environment. The culture must at least accept, if not approve, violent action as a means to an end. Political violence is also more likely if the current leadership and/or the socio-economic/political system is seen as illegitimate. Another factor is whether violence is considered to be a viable remedy to the problem.

Mike

[marct]

The relative deprivation hypothesis is probably one of the better ones around, especially since it is one of the few that actually reflects how we, as a species, think / perceive, which is in "relative" terms. Part of the reason why I suggested looking at marriage is that it is a rather complex proxy for both sex and status that is independent of any particular economic system 9i.e. it goes on regardless of the formal economic systems).

One of the other things that, I think, is important to look at is the countervailing question. Why do me rebel when they have (good) jobs? Take a look, for example, at the number of people involved in terrorist attacks who have well paying jobs and great careers. I would submit, as a subject for discussion, that the emphasis on looking at the unemployment - rebellion nexus is really a reflection of the US and Western cultural assumption of the primacy of income as a status marker, and its obverse; looking at well employed people who "rebel" casts doubt on that assumption.

Having thrown the cat amongst the pidgeons, I'll now gracefully withdraw ...

[MikeF]

Why do me rebel when they have (good) jobs?

That is the answer that seems to alude us all. Here's five very different examples to consider.

1. Charles Manson. We view him as a sociopath, but to his followers, he was leading a rebelion. His recruits came from rich families. Purpose- anarchy.

2. Latino Gangs. Money, Respect, Power is one LA gangs motto.

3. UBL/ Al Qaeda. Purpose- establish Caliphate.

4. Tyler Durbin/ Fight Club. Purpose- Anarchy.

5. Ayn Rand/Libertarians/Tea Parties. Purpose- Reclaim Capitalism.

Each group taps into some type of recruiting method that targets something (grievance, emotion, religion, whatever).

Disclaimer- I am not suggesting that the Tea Parties are akin to al Qaeda. I could have easily used a group like Code Pink.

Mike

[marct]

Hi Mike,

That is the answer that seems to alude us all. Here's five very different examples to consider.

Well, the pattern is similar behind all of them. as one pundit noted, "Man does not live by bread alone". What it really comes to is a quest for meaning and the differences between meaning structures provided by a society/culture and the opportunities to pursue them. You might want to check out Merton and Strain Theory (decent little article here).

[MikeF]

Well, the pattern is similar behind all of them. as one pundit noted, "Man does not live by bread alone". What it really comes to is a quest for meaning and the differences between meaning structures provided by a society/culture and the opportunities to pursue them. You might want to check out Merton and Strain Theory (decent little article here).

Marc,

Thank you for the link. Merton's expansion on Anomie theory makes a bit more sense to me than Durkheim's original definition. On a side note, this excerpt on the differences between the inalienable pursuit of happiness and the American Dream seems particularly relevant today.

The wording of the paper and the order of ideas remained quite close to the original product until Merton began his discussion of the accumulation of wealth and the American Dream. It is at this juncture that he expanded the discussion significantly. He elaborated on the American Dream and Americans’ desire for pecuniary success stating that there is no stopping point within the dream. The American Dream is cyclical in nature. An individual wants just a little bit more than what he has and once he achieves the little bit more the process will begin again. Merton (1949:233) declared that the origin of the dream was an individual’s parents, who he deemed to be the “transmission belt for the values and goals of the group of which they are a part, with schools acting as the official agency for passing on prevailing values.” He also claimed that individuals are bombarded from all sides with culturally accepted goals, citing numerous examples.

This description seems to be the core assumption of Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, and his call for nation-building in the US.

Our Parents were the Greatest Generation...My generation...turned out to be the "Grasshopper Generation..." devoted to our recent age of excess...and gorged on the savings and natural world that had been bequeathed to us- leaving our children huge financial and ecological deficits...And therefore we and our children are going to have to be the "Re-Generation," and summon the will, energy, focus, and innovative prowess to regenerate, renew, and reinvent America in a way that will show the world a new model for growing standards of living and interacting with nature that is truly sustainable, renewable, healthy, safe, fair, and creative of more opportunities for more people in more places than ever before.

Mike

[outletclock]

is that the authors utilized a set of assumptions, and those assumptions are questionable, and may have caused the disconfirmation of their results.

1) Is participation in insurgency really a full-time occupation? Isn't one of the defining characteristics of (some) insurgencies that the insurgents are "part-time" soldiers (and thus difficult to distinguish from the population)? In other words, soldiers by night, "ordinary people by day?"

2) Is insurgency a low-skill occupation? It would seem to me it might make more sense to take an industrial organization approach, in which insurgent organizations are looked at as "firms," with various members possessing various skill sets of varying scarcity and complexity (or lack thereof)?

3) Sure, the supply of labor might be a binding constraint, but *how* binding is it? Was there a *real* scarcity of insurgents in, say, 2003 Iraq?

Regards,
OC

###

The opportunity-cost approach is based upon a number of often implicit assumptions about the production of insurgent violence. Some of these include:

- Participation in insurgency is a full-time occupation, in the sense that individuals cannot be legitimately employed and active insurgents at the same time.
- Insurgency is a low-skill occupation so that creating jobs for the marginal unemployed reduces the pool of potential recruits.
- The supply of labor is a binding constraint on insurgent organizations.

[outletclock]

the disconfirmation of their hypotheses.

Regards
OC

[Schmedlap]

Participation in insurgency is a full-time occupation, in the sense that individuals cannot be legitimately employed and active insurgents at the same time.
- Insurgency is a low-skill occupation so that creating jobs for the marginal unemployed reduces the pool of potential recruits.

I think both of those are inaccurate. Many members of the insurgency in Iraq included doctors, engineers, and other professionals. Many were still doing their legitimate full-time jobs. Many insurgent roles are low-skill, but many are not, particularly folks who were in leadership, who were financiers or logisticians, and the guys who handled propaganda.

[M-A Lagrange]

I tend to believe that men rebel for a cause. The main problem for us is to actually recognise that cause. Few weeks ago there was a threat in SWJ called do soldiers fight for a cause.
The main feeling I had in that threat was that most of the participants came with the assumption that soldiers do a job. It goes with our model of society but does not fit into Afghan society for example. (Yes soldiers and policemen have a job there).
My point is that we, westerners, engage in the army or police with some bottom line adhesion to the cause it is fighting for. Cause and job are combined.
In the case of rebels, it is the cause that drives the engagement.
Looking at Iraq with a complete external eye, I can see that men did not rebel in a first time. They took an opportunity due to power vacancy to first pay back what the other side made them suffer and then impose their domination. And yes, the US did see it as a rebellion, rebels questioning their domination on Iraq.
In Afghanistan it is even deeper as US came and said we will change your society from A to Z.
In both cases what they have in common is a cause, not the same but a cause.

What makes them embrace that cause is the question.
But if an external power comes to your home and says: Ok I’am the new sheriff in town and you will do things the way I want.
Wouldn’t you rebel?

May be we should start looking at that first.
Because what makes you rebel (the deep and high theoretical cause) is probably the same as them.
If the US comes in my home to tell me they will run my country. Despite I like them and we share core value: I will rebel!

[MikeF]

I think both of those are inaccurate. Many members of the insurgency in Iraq included doctors, engineers, and other professionals. Many were still doing their legitimate full-time jobs. Many insurgent roles are low-skill, but many are not, particularly folks who were in leadership, who were financiers or logisticians, and the guys who handled propaganda.

Maybe it's more appropriate for Outletclock to refute the assumptions with some quantitative or at least multiple case-study qualitative evidence rather than just say "I don't like the assumptions" and ask further questions.

Yes, in the Iraq case, we caused immediate unemployment when we disbanded the Army and outlawed the Ba'ath party. But, they're covering Iraq and the Phillipines. Furthermore, Rex added the Israel/Palestine study to provide additional weight.

With that said, I got to check the dictionary on the definition of parsimonous.

Mike

[outletclock]

why the predicted results did not arise. If anything, I'd think it'd be more appropriate for me to refute the *outcomes* of the authors' "experiment" or paper rather than the *assumptions* they made in conducting and writing the experiment/paper. I was, again, just trying to come up with a parsimonious* approach toward explaining why predicted results were not found.

**I merely ventured a guess as to why: flawed assumptions.**

Besides, abundant labor/unemployment was not their only assumption - the most egregious assumption to me was that insurgency was a full-time occupation. To me the defining characteristic of an insurgency is that an insurgency (here I'm thinking of the archetypal Viet Cong) works during the day. Finally, that insurgencies are not vertically-integrated enterprises struck me as an assumption worth quarreling with.

I don't think the burden of proof is on me to come up with an explanation as to why the paper's/experiments outcomes failed to match the authors' prediction, through quantitative evidence or multiple case studies, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I could do it, certainly off the top of my head and without research. If that renders my post presumptuous (or the prior ones), I apologize. I simply think/thought it's adequate for me to posit one reason why (once more) results encountered were not the ones anticipated.

Regards,
OC

**
Parsimony: extreme or excessive economy or frugality; stinginess; niggardliness. :-)

[MikeF]

why the predicted results did not arise. If anything, I'd think it'd be more appropriate for me to refute the *outcomes* of the authors' "experiment" or paper rather than the *assumptions* they made in conducting and writing the experiment/paper. I was, again, just trying to come up with a parsimonious* approach toward explaining why predicted results were not found.

**I merely ventured a guess as to why: flawed assumptions.**

Besides, abundant labor/unemployment was not their only assumption - the most egregious assumption to me was that insurgency was a full-time occupation. To me the defining characteristic of an insurgency is that an insurgency (here I'm thinking of the archetypal Viet Cong) works during the day. Finally, that insurgencies are not vertically-integrated enterprises struck me as an assumption worth quarreling with.

I don't think the burden of proof is on me to come up with an explanation as to why the paper's/experiments outcomes failed to match the authors' prediction, through quantitative evidence or multiple case studies, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I could do it, certainly off the top of my head and without research. If that renders my post presumptuous (or the prior ones), I apologize. I simply think/thought it's adequate for me to posit one reason why (once more) results encountered were not the ones anticipated.

Regards,
OC

**
Parsimony: extreme or excessive economy or frugality; stinginess; niggardliness. :-)

OC,

Thanks for the reply and teaching me a new word. You did bring up an important point. Some (or many) insurgents may be employed during the day in legitimate jobs while working for the insurgency at night. Honestly, I don't know how you would track that figure unless you conducted a survey 10-15 years after hostilities were ceased.

We spend a lot of money on the assumption that if the people are employed, then they won't fight. That may be true in some cases, but it is not true in others. For instance, many Sunnis in Iraq felt that the gov't was illegitimate so they were going to fight regardless.

Contrastingly, in the case of perceived underemployment, the initial results (their paper is not published yet) is that there is a strong correlation to rebelling. That probably goes back to the original hypothesis of relative deprevation.

Mike

[Surferbeetle]

The Coevolution of Economic and Political Development by Fali Huang of Singapore Management University

This paper establishes a simple model of long run economic and political development, which is driven by the inherent technical features of different factors in production, and political conflicts among factor owners on how to divide the outputs. The main capital form in economy evolves from land to physical capital and then to human capital, which enables the respective factor owners (landlords, capitalists, and workers) to gain political powers in the same sequence, shaping the political development path from monarchy to elite ruling and finally to full suffrage. When it is too costly for any group of factor owners to repress others, political compromise is reached and economic progress is not blocked; otherwise, the political conflicts may lead to economic stagnation.

Walt Whitman Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow (also known as Walt Rostow or W.W. Rostow) (October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003) was an American economist and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Prominent for his role in the shaping of American policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, he was a staunch anti-communist, and was noted for a belief in the efficacy of capitalism and free enterprise. Rostow served as a major adviser on national security affairs under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He supported American military involvement in the Vietnam War. In his later years he taught at Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin with his wife, Elspeth Rostow, who would later become dean of the school. He wrote extensively in defense of free enterprise economics, particularly in developing nations. Rostow was famous especially for writing the book The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto (1960) which became a classic text in several fields of social sciences.

[SJPONeill]

Are there not two questions here? The first is why do working men rebel? The second is that described in the abstract for the paper: why do working men rebel in insurgencies? or perhaps why do working men support insurgencies? I wonder also does the paper include both sex's employment status as there may be some interesting differences between stats for men and those for women - which may or may not be related to local culture.

I'm thinking that perhaps the answers to the first question may be totally different to the answers to the second; and that there may also be distinctions between those who simply rebel and those who rebel and align to a cause (rebel by aligning to cause?).

This is a great topic and one which challenges a lot of preconceptions - certainly I am going to be following it with interest with a view to rethinking my stance on opportunity insurgents...

[outletclock]

on some of the issues you raise.

1) Are all rebellions insurgencies?

2) Are all insurgencies rebellions?

3) Should we substitute rebellions for revolutions? (Perhaps this is just me.)

4) Why do working men rebel (presumably, as opposed to the unemployed - an issue, I think, touched upon by Marx in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte")? That is, is there a differential propensity to rebel/be an insurgent depending on one's unemployment status, i.e., employed versus unemployed, not whether one has "high" or "low" unemployment status - e.g., Wall Street Titan versus (fill in the blank).

5) Is there a differential propensity to rebel/be an insurgent depending on one's sex? Here I'd be thinking hard about the opportunity costs of being a woman in an insurgent organization, or being a neutral, or being a government supporter; and - once more in regards to the industrial organization of insurgencies - the role of women within insurgencies.

6) Perhaps most interestingly, strategic and/or opportunistic behavior during insurgencies and revolutions: free riding off others (e.g., waiting until the insurgents appear to have won, and then joining the insurgents - or the counterinsurgents, as the case may be), waiting for tipping points, trying to gauge tipping points. I'm struck, I think, by Jeffrey Race's observation in "War Comes to Long An" that the war had been won by the Viet Cong by some *very* early stage - say, 1955 (I don't have the book available).

Don't claim to have any of the answers, but thought I'd try and sort out the some of the issues, although I might not have been any more successful at that, either.

Regards
OC

###

Are there not two questions here? The first is why do working men rebel? The second is that described in the abstract for the paper: why do working men rebel in insurgencies? or perhaps why do working men support insurgencies? I wonder also does the paper include both sex's employment status as there may be some interesting differences between stats for men and those for women - which may or may not be related to local culture.

I'm thinking that perhaps the answers to the first question may be totally different to the answers to the second; and that there may also be distinctions between those who simply rebel and those who rebel and align to a cause (rebel by aligning to cause?).

This is a great topic and one which challenges a lot of preconceptions - certainly I am going to be following it with interest with a view to rethinking my stance on opportunity insurgents...

[MikeF]

on some of the issues you raise.

1) Are all rebellions insurgencies?

2) Are all insurgencies rebellions?

3) Should we substitute rebellions for revolutions? (Perhaps this is just me.)

4) Why do working men rebel (presumably, as opposed to the unemployed - an issue, I think, touched upon by Marx in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte")? That is, is there a differential propensity to rebel/be an insurgent depending on one's unemployment status, i.e., employed versus unemployed, not whether one has "high" or "low" unemployment status - e.g., Wall Street Titan versus (fill in the blank).

5) Is there a differential propensity to rebel/be an insurgent depending on one's sex? Here I'd be thinking hard about the opportunity costs of being a woman in an insurgent organization, or being a neutral, or being a government supporter; and - once more in regards to the industrial organization of insurgencies - the role of women within insurgencies.

6) Perhaps most interestingly, strategic and/or opportunistic behavior during insurgencies and revolutions: free riding off others (e.g., waiting until the insurgents appear to have won, and then joining the insurgents - or the counterinsurgents, as the case may be), waiting for tipping points, trying to gauge tipping points. I'm struck, I think, by Jeffrey Race's observation in "War Comes to Long An" that the war had been won by the Viet Cong by some *very* early stage - say, 1955 (I don't have the book available).

Don't claim to have any of the answers, but thought I'd try and sort out the some of the issues, although I might not have been any more successful at that, either.

Some thoughts:

#1,2,3. My understanding of the literature is that insurgency, rebellion, and revolution are synonymous. I prefer to use the old language as it is easier to understand. When trying to differentiate between the different phases, I turn to Mao's Protracted War three phases. In every society, many rebellions will exist on the Phase 0 level (small, non-violent, non-influential). Basically, they start with an idea. Most insurgencies are uninteresting- they never build momentum, the government squashes them once they go violent, or they fight through the political system. It's the violent ones that we study. One key exception is the non-violent social movements of the 20th century. I suppose we can call them assymetric rebellions.

#5. Sex is another interesting case. Most serial killers and sociopaths are men, but some exceptions remain. We had a phenomena with female suicide bombers in Iraq that has not been analyzed in depth, but for the most part, it's the men who rebel. One thing that I recently learned is that in Afghan/Pakistan society, young men must receive permission from their mother's to join the rebellion. So, if we can influence the mothers through education, then over time, we may minimize the recruitment of young men.

For a man to take action (blow up his own roads, kill/behead his neighbors, or blow himself up), he's got to be pretty upset. My own thoughts are that grievances are a combination of utility and emotion.

Thoughts?

Mike