Measuring Political Violence and Land Inequality in Central America

The value of cross-national quantitative studies of the relationship between mass political violence and land inequality is challenged along three lines. First, gross and systematic errors in the political violence data of the World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (the usual data source...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 1992-03, Vol.86 (1), p.169-176
Main Author: Brockett, Charles D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
CENTRAL AMERICA
Datasets
EQUALITY OR INEQUALITY
Farms
GUATEMALA
Handbooks
Income inequality
Inequality
Killing
LAND AND LAND USE
Land distribution
Land Management
Land tenure
Land use
Latin America
Measurement
NICARAGUA
Peasant class
Political conflict
Political science
Political violence
Politics
Research Note
Rural areas
THIRD WORLD NATIONS
Violence
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The value of cross-national quantitative studies of the relationship between mass political violence and land inequality is challenged along three lines. First, gross and systematic errors in the political violence data of the World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (the usual data source for empirical studies) render them worthless for Central America at least and probably much of the Third World as well. Second, conceptualizations of land inequality have been too simplistic to be of much theoretical value. Third, the temporal nature of this relationship has been inadequately considered. Responding to such deficiencies, I elaborate a broader understanding of land inequality and provide a fuller discussion of the temporal nature of its relationship to political violence. Throughout, the five nations of Central America are utilized for appropriate case material.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.2307/1964022