In some cases of insurgency, the combat frontier is contested and erratic, as rebels target cities as their economic prey. In other cases, it is tidy and stable, seemingly representing an equilibrium in which cities are effectively protected from violent non-state actors. What factors account for these differences in the interface between urban-based states and rural-based challengers? To explore this question, this volume examines two regions representing two dramatically different outcomes. In West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone), capital cities became economic targets for rebels, who posed dire threats to the survival of the state. In Maoist India, despite an insurgent ideology aiming to overthrow the state via a strategy of progressive city capture, the combat frontier effectively firewalls cities from Maoist violence.
This book argues that trade networks underpinning the economic relationship between rural and urban areas - termed 'interstitial economies' - may differ dramatically in their impact on (and response to) the combat frontier. It explains rebel predatory tendencies towards cities as a function of transport networks allowing monopoly profits to be made by urban-based traders. It explains combat frontier delineation as a function of the social structure of the trade networks: hierarchical networks permit elite-elite bargains that cohere the frontier. These factors represent what might be termed respectively the 'hardware' and 'software' of the rural-urban economic relationship.
Of interest to any student of political economy and violence, this book presents new arguments and insights about the relationships between violence and the economy, predation and production, core and periphery.
Why do some rebel insurgencies target cities as economic prey, whilst others are content to trade with them? This volume examines how the trade networks underpinning the economic relationship between rural and urban areas differ in their impact on (and response to) the combat frontier.
The form and function of armed conflict is changing in the twenty-first century. So too are explanations of how wars start, why they endure, and what makes them end. Topher McDougal is in the vanguard of a new generation of economists committed to explaining the drivers of these so-called new wars. In The Political Economy of Rural-Urban Conflict, McDougal takes readers beyond the greed and grievance debates that dominated the 1990s and 2000s. In his
rivetting new book he explains how violent predation in settings as diverse as West Africa and South Asia are a function of trade networks at the core and periphery of city systems. This is essential reading for scholars and practitioners alike.
