2
(d)
Giving the very first step to renew a bridge of the theoretical debate about
land and its empirical implications, pushing for the search for better data.
This deductive investigation of the importance of land tenure globally is part of a
larger project in which I also conduct a microstudy with disaggregated data using the same
systematic approach, with similar hypotheses. This comparative study for all countries in the
world with a population of more than one million inhabitants in 1970 covers the years 1969-
1997, a period which some scholars suggest involved an unusually large number of civil
wars.
One of the great obstacles in taking this initiative is to deal with lack of data. Many
critiques of this paper may arise on this sphere, but it can be a future incentive to go further
into this subject and improve the data.
Different types of peasants
A rich discussion in the literature has taken place regarding the characteristics
and proneness to revolution of the many different kinds of peasants. This debate occurred
mostly in the 60
’s and 70’s, but suddenly disappeared from the scene. In this part, I want to
revisit this discussion, showing the differences and similarities among the main scholars, and
raising questions concerning each type of peasant and its proneness to violent political
collective action. I will discuss the main ideas of this literature for the less knowledgeable
reader.
Despite the fact that this discussion refers mainly to revolution, my intention is to
broaden it to include civil war and violence. For this purpose, I adopt a broader definition of
civil war, which is well-accepted in the field.
“Armed conflict between two or more domestic
actors about a contested incompatibility resulting at least in a certain quantity of deaths
”
(Gates 2002, p.4). To operationalize it, I use the Fearon and Laitin (2000) dependent variable
‘civil war onset’. In Figure 1, we can see that, if the incumbent can fight instead of just giving
way to the insurgent, it will. On rare occasions power is passed from the incumbent to the
insurgent with no resistance at all. At that moment (after the minimum deaths threshold is
reached for both sides), we have a
“typical” case of civil war, and therefore we can talk about
the determinants of civil war onset, which are analyzed in this context.
Violence does not simply erupt one day; it
’s a consequence of minor steps the
oppressed people take in sequence which can culminate in a civil war, but which will range
from quiescence to violence (Anderson 1994, p.11), passing by voting (in case of democratic
countries), petitions, demonstrations, strikes, blockages, land invasions. When the incumbent
reacts violently to the peasants
’ organized actions, it could escalate to civil war (see Figure
2).
According to Table 1, civil war violence should be bilateral (or multilateral) and its
purpose is one of compliance (and not extermination), otherwise it would be state terrorism,
genocide or reciprocal extermination, but not civil war (Kalyvas 2000, p.35). I will focus on
the first type only, but the process discussed here also applies to revolutions, which can be
achieved through civil war itself. Urban terrorism is not relevant in this study.
One of the pioneers to bring the debate about peasant political participation and
mobilization for collective violence was Stinchcombe, in 1961. He studied property and
claimed that rural stratification is much more important than urban stratification, because
one
’s occupational position prevails in the urban, while in the rural one’s property position
prevails. His differentiation of the property system in agriculture (that was more different
than in the urban types of property) was based in five property types:
Convention