Why group inequalities can become ticking time bomb

With the benefit of hindsight, one can observe that the French revolution was fuelled by inequalities veiled as class struggle.

In July 1789, the French public revolted against the rule of Louis the 16th and his infamous queen, Marie Antoinette.

The French nation was organised into estates. The clergy and nobility were the first and second estates respectively, wealthy from large land ownership, tax immunity and legal barriers that protected their businesses.

The peasants, who comprised the third estate, were allowed to own land and produce but paid huge taxes and were disgruntled by the fact that they could not carry out certain lucrative businesses.

These misgivings were exacerbated by the enlightenment at the time espoused by the writings of John Locke, Voltaire, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot among others.

Inequality and an awareness of a better alternative is a potent ingredient for social change.

The deadly effect of inequality was first espoused by Plato. “We maintain that if a state is to avoid the greatest plague of all — I mean civil war, though civil disintegration would be a better term — extreme poverty and wealth must not be allowed to arise in any section of the citizen-body, because both lead to both these disasters.”

This assertion has long formed the foundation of the economic thought that inequality leads to conflict.

The position was affirmed by the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835: “Remove the secondary causes that have produced the great convulsions of the world and you will almost always find the principle of inequality at the bottom.

Either the poor have attempted to plunder the rich, or the rich to enslave the poor. If then, a society can ever be founded in which every man shall have something to keep and little to take from others, much will have been done for peace”

New research, however, suggests that inequality alone cannot create conflict.

Violent conflict

Countries, where there is high inequality, do not experience more conflict than countries with little or no inequality.

It’s a fact that by the time of the French revolution happened, King Louis had reduced the inequality gap by allowing peasants to own land.

Political economist Christopher Cramer did a paper for the UN entitled Inequality and Conflict. In the paper, Cramer argues that inequality may not be a cause of conflict and may not perhaps be necessary or sufficient for violent conflict.

Rather, some characteristics of this inequality, other than inequality itself, may be more relevant; and perhaps something in the intensity of inequality, measured in various ways may be relevant to the outbreak of violent conflict. The studies done by the World Bank has given a further understanding of the subject.

It found that inequalities between groups defined by religion, ethnicity, or regional identities are linked to a significantly higher risk of armed conflict.

This is group-identity inequality which is also known as horizontal inequality.

The French public was not moved by individual inequalities, rather by class inequalities between the peasants and the nobles which had become rigid group identities for centuries.

This was, in fact, true in Russia when over a century later, the peasants organised the famed October revolution and threw out the Tzar and his nobles.

Group inequalities defined along geographical lines would also play a part in the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The theory equally holds true for African conflicts.  It is evident in the conflicts in Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan.

In Nigeria, maternal mortality rates in the northeast of the country are nine times those in the southwest.

This is driven by the fact that the southwest is home to the educated and wealth Igbo tribe while the north is home to the Muslim Hausa who never adopted the white man’s education.

President Barrack Obama during his speech at Kasarani Stadium when he visited Kenya in 2015 said: “Today, a young child in Nyanza Province is four times more likely to die than a child in Central Province - even though they are equal in dignity and the eyes of God.

A girl in Rift Valley is far less likely to attend secondary school than a girl in Nairobi.”

These realities have existed for long, entrenched by politics of ethnicity and neo-colonial policies like the sessional paper number 10 of 1965. The paper advocated for focused development on areas with the highest agricultural productivity.

The result of these inequalities has seen tribal clashes, xenophobic attacks at the coast by the Kaya Bombo militant group, post-election violence of 2007 and the enthusiasm for sections of the country to discuss secession after the 2017 elections.  

There has been progress to incorporate the marginalised into the political system through strategic political appointments.

Economically, devolution is expected to distribute resources to areas that traditionally did not have access to resources at the centre. But this is slow and the gap remains overtly visible.

In 1789, despite the efforts of King Louis XVI to improve the well being of the peasants and his subjects generally, his bankruptcy and failed fiscal policies led to a drought and hunger which in the end triggered the revolution.

As with all other children of divisive political strategy, inequality is highly flammable and a small economic shock or political trigger might kindle it beyond control.

-The writer is an independent analyst