Social Differentiation and Political Violence

Social Differentiation and Political ViolenceMass Political Violence: A Cross-National Causal Analysis by Douglas A. Hibbs,; The Politics ofViolence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot by David O. Sears; John B. McConahay;Legitimacy and Ethnicity: A Case Study of Singapore by Peter A. Busch; Belfast: Approach toCrisis by Ian Budge; Cornelius O'LearyReview by: Stanley B. GreenbergThe Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 161-184Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/173455 .

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Social Differentiation and Political Violence

STANLEY B. GREENBERG Department of Political Science Yale University

DOUGLAS A. HIBBS, Jr., Mass Political Violence: A Cross-National Causal Analysis. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973.

DAVID 0. SEARS and JOHN B. McCONAHAY, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.

PETER A. BUSCH, Legitimacy and Ethnicity: A Case Study of Singapore. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1974.

IAN BUDGE and CORNELIUS O'LEARY, Belfast: Approach to Crisis. London: MacMillan Press. 1973.

The violence of racially or ethically diverse societies is a recurring problem among nations. It continues to plague constitutional developments in Northern Ireland, shape the emerging nations of southern Africa, and even influence the politics of Western European countries previously free of such concerns. On these grounds alone, we are wise to take cognizance of a growing literature on violence in socially differentiated societies. The books examined in this essay encompass important developments in intranational violence-sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, racial violence in the United States, and ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia. However, perplexing analytic problems in this area of inquiry, in addition to the intrinsic concern with political violence, draw us to this literature. Socially differentiated societies frequently emerge from singular historical processes that continue to bedevil intergroup relations; politics in these societies often is disrupted by subgroups whose JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 19 No. 1, March 1975 ? 1975 Sage Publications, Inc.

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development is obscured by primary trends in the society at large; diverse societies often are part of a larger ethnic and racial collage that impinges on domestic political developments. These characteristics combine to confound both comparative and aggregate data analysis.

This paper begins by examining a recent book on mass political violence. Though the work incorporates broad theoretical concerns, it raises issues crucial to the politics of socially differentiated societies. Later three books are reviewed that focus on specific societies-their diversity, history, and violence.

MASS POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Mass Political Violence represents an expansive approach to the problem of intranational violence. The author, by his own design, abandons the "richness of detail that characterizes micropolitical analyses" in favor of procedures that maximize generalization. His research, therefore, is broadly comparative (based on a 108-nation data file) and theoretically complete (relying on simultaneous consideration of an array of hypotheses). For the former, the author constructs a data set based primarily on the World Data Analysis Program at Yale, though supple- mented by indices from Gurr (1966) and other sources. For the latter, the author builds from single equation hypotheses, or "partial theories," to a multiequation formulation based on a block recursive structure.

It should not be surprising that the book's principal contribution is its scope. This accomplishment is, in part, a function of the data set's size and completeness. The more important factor, however, is the successful incursion into a broad range of central but unresolved questions regarding political violence. The author grapples with problems of economic development and growth, structural and developmental imbalances, racial and ethnic stratification, elite behavior and domestic political structure. In each instance the author reviews the existing theory and empirical findings and tests competing hypotheses. Though the reader is able to focus on specific theoretical concerns (self-contained causal models), the book also provides a glimpse at mass violence in its full complexity, as an interrelated causal process encompassing developmental, political, and social issues. The picture is holistic and inclusive.

But what proves to be strengths at this level of analysis will sometimes prove distracting in the analysis of socially differentiated societies. To illustrate the problem, let us review some of the more dramatic findings in Mass Political Violence.



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(1) The concept of political violence is captured by two distinct dimensions: collective protest (riots, anti-government demonstrations, and political strikes) and internal war (deaths from political violence, armed attacks, and assassinations; Hibbs, 1973: 16). Hibbs's demonstration of these two separable forms of violence is an important contribution in itself; it also proved a necessary first step to sorting out the varied impact of different theories of intranational violence. Factors that produce internal war, we shall see later, frequently have little influence on the incidence of collective protest, and vice versa.

(2) What is most striking about research in economic development is the range of plausible outcomes: no relationship between industrialization and violence, a linear and negative one, or a curvilinear association. Nor does Hibbs uncover in previous research any singular finding on violence and rates of change. At one end of the spectrum are researchers and theorists who believe rapid social change fosters social strain, anomie, instability, and a subsequent receptivity to violence; at the other are those who believe population growth decreases the propensity to violence. Hibbs provides, if not a definitive guide to this mass of evidence, then at least a convincing demonstration of his eclectic model. Internal war increases slightly with early economic development, but for the most part decreases with industrialization. Collective protest, on the other hand, follows more closely a curvilinear model (Hibbs, 1973: 25-28). Rates of economic change and urbanization fail to produce a dramatic impact on violence, but the rate of population growth (frequently ignored in these discussions) has a significant influence on both violence dimensions (Hibbs, 1973: 36-39). One of the more suggestive findings in Mass Political Violence is the interaction of economic development and population growth and their impact on political violence.

(3) Hibbs finds little evidence in his data, despite Gurr's work on relative deprivation and Deutsch's work on social mobilization, that structural imbalances or frustration have any bearing on levels of mass violence. Feelings of relative deprivation, measured by the imbalance of educational achievement and economic development, have few practical consequences. The imbalance of urbanization and economic development produces one "barely significant" result for internal war (Hibbs, 1973: 52). The imbalance between social mobilization and governmental performance fails to reach even this scant level for either form of violence. Hibbs is forced to the conclusion that the theory may be appealing and "may of course be valid for particular cases," but 'it does not aid the formulation of a broadly applicable explanatory model at the macro or systemic level of analysis" (Hibbs, 1973: 48).



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(4) In contrast to imbalance theories, national integration and sociocul- tural differentiation emerge as central issues in Hibbs's analysis. The division of societies along racial, language, religious, or cultural lines raises the spectre of multiple, perhaps conflicting loyalties, and internecine warfare over control of new political institutions. It is important to note that in Hibbs's analysis, differentiation by itself does not produce mass violence (Hibbs, 1973: 69-71). The effects of a differentiated population are mediated through concepts of political separatism (percentage of population "dissatisfied with the closeness of their political association with the polity of which they are formally members") and group discrimination (exclusion from economic, political, and social positions; Gurr, 1966: 71, 75). The latter has a singular impact on collective protest, mediating the causal effect of all other independent variables (Hibbs, 1973: 79). The former combines with group discrimination to create a strong causal link to internal war (Hibbs, 1973: 76). In the multiequation formulation, this linkage with internal war forms part of a larger causal process: "the conjunction of a socially mobilized and culturally differentiated population" fosters political separatism which in turn "has severe consequences for national unity and domestic stability" (Hibbs, 1973: 191). The effect of discrimination in the multiequation formulation is still primarily on collective protest, but where this "in-system" response is met by governmental repression, the conflict is apt to degenerate into internal war (Hibbs, 1973: 191-193).

There can be little doubt that Mass Political Violence makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of violence within nation- states and specifically the nexus of violence and social differentiation. Our critique highlights a problem in general theory and special problems in the study of social differentiation. It should not, however, detract seriously from our appreciation of Hibbs's vital contribution.

The author's intended contribution is an aggregation of middle-level concepts or theories into a multiequation form that has a pretense to general theory. The problem, of course, is that aggregation does not solve the problem Hibbs recognizes at the beginning: there is no "single, compelling theory that specified, even crudely, a comprehensive causal model of mass political violence" (Hibbs, 1973: 3). The block recursive, causal model is a collection of middle-level theories. There is no general theory that emerges from the model or that seems to meet the requirements of the model. The interpretation-even where it provides valuable insights-is necessarily cumbersome and fully dependent on the concepts used in constructing the model. Hibbs's analysis of the multiequa-



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tion formulation, therefore, is devoted to sorting out interesting patterns within the model and explaining each linkage in a causal chain or loop. The results can illuminate a particular causal process, help determine the importance of alternative causal paths, isolate problems of spuriousness, or distinguish additive (e.g., social mobilization decreases separatism and internal war) from interactive effects (e.g., social mobilization and social differentiation combine to encourage separatism and internal war). The value of such models should not be underestimated nor the scope of inquiry necessary to create them. The variety of theories, however, that helped construct the model remain its motive force and it is in their interests, rather than the interest of a general theory of violence, that the model gains its utility.

Hibbs recognizes a second problem: the tension between aggregate and comparative data analysis on the one hand and the detailed examination of selected societies on the other. The costs in his approach are viewed as problems of richness and subtlety, not of trends and direction. They are overshadowed by the model's comprehensiveness and the ability to portray the patterns of cause and effect. Social differentiation, however, may raise peculiar issues not amicably treated within a nationally aggregated, broadly comparative framework.

Hibbs raises some of these difficulties himself. In discussing the additive and interactive effects of social mobilization, he writes that a system of structural equations is not adequate to the problem; indeed, further investigation "cannot readily be handled well with cross-national, aggregate data" (Hibbs, 1973: 191-192). Similarly, the author notes that the equation for group discrimination "yields a particularly poor fit to the observed data" (Hibbs, 1973: 174). The roots of discrimination, a principal cause of collective protest and a primary concern in this essay, remain inexplicable. Hibbs does not state in this case that cross-national, aggregate data is inhospitable to the problem. But it will become apparent in later sections that the roots of discrimination and separatism frequently lie in historical developments that escape the purview of comparative analysis.

In his discussion of imbalance theories, Hibbs asks himself why so impressive a theoretical base produced such paltry results. The answer, he suggests, is collinearity among the independent variables: "Collinearity in a nonexperimental setting means that there are not many instances where variables such as social mobilization and social welfare diverge markedly" (Hibbs, 1973: 62). The answer may also be found in the contrast between systemic and micro-level imbalances. The actions of groups and individuals



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may be influenced by imbalances of various types, even where the society at large seems fully integrated. Relative deprivation, for example, is a group rather than a societal characteristic. Specific groups may evaluate their position unfavorably against a "comparison level" without the society itself experiencing a fundamental imbalance of aspirations and reality. Similarly, a society may have achieved a stable level of urbanization while at the same time some traditional groups face a traumatic industrializing experience. This contrast, in fact, between the experiences of the dominant society and those of particular subgroups (on history and rates of urbanization, for example) may itself generate political violence.

The distinctive subgroup experience may seem only a nuance in the study of mass violence across nations. It is, however, the essence of social differentiation, particularly when manifest as racial or ethnic stratification. If we ignore the subgroup experience-as is frequently done in national, aggregate data analysis-the roots of social differentiation and violence will remain obscure.

THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE

The Politics of Violence is about a historical event-the Watts riot of 1965. It is not simply a porthole into the minds of the riot participants, asking who participated, what they thought of the police, white people, and America. The book also examines Watts as a larger historical problem, as a problem of the city (not just the ghetto), and as a political event. The violence that gutted Los Angeles' central city-34 people killed, 1,032 injured, 3,952 arrested, and an estimated $40 million damages (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 9)-represents a conjunction of forces. In it we can see the new urban blacks that came to dominate the disorders. We can also see the indifference of a public and political structure that viewed blacks and black needs as invisible. After the police and national guard had completed their work and the fires had simmered down, the event became a local and national cause celebre. Integral to the riot are the commissions, the commentators, and the social scientists that sought to explain it and prevent its reenactment.

The Politics of Violence begins with the "Fires of August" and methodically brings the pieces together that turn an incident into an historical event. The principal value of this book lies in its treatment of the riot as a "complete" phenomenon, replete with a history, a context, and consequences. Like Hibbs's work, it raises questions crucial to this essay,



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but also questions of more general interest; unlike Hibbs's work or some others to be considered here, it addresses a nonacademic audience as well.

At the outset the authors attempt to address the flood of "folk social science" that emerged following the riots. The public utterances of an outspoken police chief, the considered report of the McCone Commission, and the later studies of selected social scientists reflect, perhaps to their own astonishment, a form of theoretical thinking. What their theories share is a conception of ghetto life and development that robs the events in August of any political or symbolic significance. Their views do not take into account concepts of relative deprivation, social mobilization and governmental services, social differentiation, and group discrimination (concepts central to Hibbs's analysis). They center, instead, on notions of "contagion" among an excitable group of people, youthful animal spirits, the breakdown of family life, or an underclass of destructive types. Only when discussing the problems of recent southern migrants does "folk social science" take up an issue current in the violence literature. The rioters, in this view, are drawn from an unstable group of ghetto residents recently torn loose from their stable moorings in the rural South. They find themselves in an unfamiliar competitive environment without social supports and without an integrated normative framework. Such views of ghetto rioting are reassuring to a public that was shocked by the riot's destruction and disinclined to remedial efforts. The roots of the Watts riot are found in the peculiar characteristics of the ghetto residents themselves or in events far removed from Los Angeles.

Sears and McConahay demonstrate how little riot involvement has to do with the theories that grew up in the riot's aftermath. At this level, the book should prove invaluable to an audience more directly concerned with public policy questions. But the Politics of Violence, while discrediting those formulations, provides a compelling theoretical alternative-"a comprehensive social psychological theory of urban mass violence" (Sears and McConahay, 1973: vii). At this level, the work has special relevance for our discussion.

Rioting, in this view, is "counternormative" and must be examined as a problem of normative integration and socialization (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 32-33). For "folk social science" and even Hibbs's analysis, such malintegration is the province of the migrants, recently uprooted in the South and inadequately socialized to urban life. But for Sears and McConahay, normative conflict is the problem of the "New Urban Blacks"-those Watts residents who spent their formative years, not in the




South, but in the urban North and West (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 34-39). The young Los Angeles native, they hypothesize (1973: 46), is distinguished by a number of characteristics from the traditional migrant population.

(1) More open hostility toward whites should be a consequence of northern urban socialization, due to the more relaxed external controls against the expression of anti-white hostility.

(2) Positive black identity should be more common among the New Urban Blacks because in the North the black is not so blatantly assigned to a lower caste position.

(3) Greater political involvement and sophistication should mark the New Urban Blacks, because of their greater educational level and because of their greater freedom to participate politically in the North and their resulting greater political activity.

(4) Greater political disaffection should characterize them because of their more open hostility toward white authorities, higher expectations for equal power and treatment, and increased political awareness.

During the 1960s the New Urban Blacks, characterized by a distinctive pattern of socialization and heightened status deprivation, came to predominate 'among the younger ghetto residents (ages 15-29). They developed a strong sense of grievance against local institutions, like the police and schools. And when they saw that conventional means for redressing grievances were blocked, these younger ghetto residents turned to a violent alternative.

Politics of Violence is, for the most part, a test of these hypotheses. It relies upon survey samples taken during 1965 and 1966, in the months immediately following the Watts riot. Nearly 500 respondents were selected in the Curfew Zone (designated by the Lieutenant Governor during the riot) and an additional 124 persons were chosen from those arrested during the riots. The analysis also draws on a sample of 586 whites living outside the curfew area and a small sample of Mexican Americans living in it (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 210-21 1). The results are almost always considered in tabular form accompanied by chi-square tests.

The data analysis generally confirms the hypothesized relationships and consequently, the model of the New Urban Black. The young, Los Angeles natives are more inclined to express a positive black identification than the Southern migrants; they are also more politically disaffected (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 71, 74). As the authors anticipate, the young,




regardless of socialization, confront similar local political institutions and accordingly express a uniform and pronounced disaffection (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 76). Finally, their analysis reveals that status deprivation is particularly marked among the native blacks and that differences between natives and migrants are especially great among the young. The results highlight the paradox of relative deprivation and comparison levels. Among those individuals objectively most advantaged-in this case, the native-born, young Los Angelenos-feelings of deprivation are most pronounced (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 87-88).

The model predicts, and the data confirm, that these emergent groups and beliefs are closely associated with civil disorder. The new patterns of socialization-positive black identification, antiwhite sentiments, and generalized disaffection-are strongly correlated with riot participation (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 91-94), and respondents who experience subjective status deprivation score at every age level nearly twice as higi. on riot participation as satisfied respondents (Sears and McConahay, 1973 95). However, the single most important ingredient in riot participation its

the recognition of grievances against local institutions-particularly police, merchants, and service agencies (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 98).

The riot in Watts was not a rardorn outburst, a product of the "riffraff,9" or simply the inheritance of developments in the South. It emerges as a confluence of forces-the new, disaffected, native Los Angeleno, feelings of status deprivation, and above all, a strong sense of grievance and political futility. It is both the product of these factors and an alternative to existing political practice.

This formulation in the Politics of Violence can be criticized at two levels. The first is methodological and the second, historical.

Though the data are generally supportive of the Sears-McConahay model, the analysis fails to confirm a number of important hypotheses- while others barely approach significance. The New Urban Black, for example, is no more anti-white than his counterpart from the South; nor is he more politically knowledgeable (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 72, 77). His pronounced black identification emerges only after the "native" group is analytically reconstituted; his generalized political disaffection in important instances is not statistically distinguishable from that of other respondents (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 71, 74). Hence, the authors tend to overstate the consistency and strength of relationships, particularly in the area of distinctive urban socialization.

The evolution of Watts, where native-born youth come to dominate particular segments of the ghetto population, is not an historically unique




development. Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrant communities in the United States faced similar experiences with migration, urbanization, and socialization. They, too, reached a point where native American ethnics predominated among the young. These New Urban Natives certainly were better educated than their immigrant parents or the younger migrants still arriving from abroad. Their values very likely reflected the "brashness" of American urban life more than the normative conservatism of peasant societies. Their accommodation to local political structures, including the police and schools, was not achieved without an initial period of antagonism and distrust. Yet few of these communities were wracked by civil disorders.

If the theoretical formulation in Politics of Violence is generalized, it must prove sensitive to similar historical developments that produced a wholly different outcome. What is unique in the black experience? Were blacks slower to move into positions of political influence? Were their employment prospects more circumscribed? Were their grievances more acute? What socializing or politicizing effect did the civil rights movement have on the New Urban Blacks?

Perhaps the book's principal shortcoming (and indeed the shortcoming of virtually all research in this area) is its failure to answer the question, "Why Watts?" Why did the riot occur in Watts and why in 1965? Sears and McConahay (1973: 145) look to three developments.

To begin with, the riots occurred in Los Angeles first because the city's size and patterns of black migration made it one of the few cities with masses of New Urban Blacks at physical maturity during the 1960's. It was this generation that provided the shock troops. Second, the riots struck Los Angeles first because whites and white leadership there were too self-preoccupied and hence were doing little if anything to head off trouble.... Third, the violence happened in Los Angeles first because Los Angeles and Southern California arrived first at a set of social conditions now just being approached by other cities and their suburban rings [particularly patterns of racial segration] .

To begin with, the riots did not occur first in Los Angeles but began in earnest the previous year in Harlem, the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, and later in Rochester. The contextual factors (i.e., white migration and Protestant values introduced from the Midwest) that Sears and McConahay associate with the Los Angeles disorders cannot account for these prior riots. Second, while Los Angeles may have achieved a distinctive phase of demographic development in the 1960s (the prepon- derance of mature, New Urban Blacks), other cities reached this point at earlier times without the outbreak of violence. Baltimore, Philadelphia,



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and New York City nurtured a large, native-born population well before the 1960s. They, no less than Los Angeles, were caught up in the violence of the Sixties. Third, few would doubt that Los Angeles officials and the white public were insensitive to black needs, and Politics of Violence makes a convincing case for black invisibility in the press. But neither the book nor the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968: 203-205) gives any reason to believe this insensitivity was more marked in Los Angeles than in most other large cities. Finally, housing segregation is undoubtedly pronounced in Los Angeles. However, the extent of segregation in Los Angeles is about average for cities in the West and Northeast and less segregated than the average city in the Midwest (Taeuber and Taeuber, 1969: 37-41).

Neither the survey results nor the conceptual model helps us anticipate the outbreak of violence. They fail to answer why now and why in Ls Angeles. The Politics of Violence, however, remains an essential guide to the riots of the 1960s. Its theory and data make clear who joined these disturbances and what the act of participation meant to the participants themselves.

LEGITIMACY AND ETHNICITY

Singapore is ethnically and linguistically diverse. Three-quarters of its population trace its heritage and language to China; a substantial minority (15 %) shares its roots with the preponderant Malay populations of neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia. (The remainder of the population comprises Indians, Europeans, Iraqi-Jews, Eurasians, and some "runclassifi- ables.") The two principal population groups are compartmentalized, as Busch notes (1974: 22): "the respective nationalisms of Singapore's Chinese and Malays were developed independently of each other." The Chinese came to Singapore as immigrants and laborers; they created tightly-knit communities, built on uniquely Chinese institutions, and were preoccupied with developments on the mainland. They raised funds for Sun Yat-sen and joined with other overseas Chinese in encouraging the use of the Mandarin dialect and the development of Mandarin Chinese instruction. The Chinese community later proved active in the (exclusively Chinese) Malayan Communist Party, a host of left-leaning community organizations (school committees, labor unions, student associations) and, finally, in the People's Action Party (PAP), "the only significant political force in Singapore" (Busch, 1974: 24). While the Malays dominated



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political life in neighboring countries, they remained relatively dormant in Singapore until after the Japanese occupation. Even now, the Malays are segregated from the dominant Chinese community; they are confined to largely menial employment and to a politically subordinate role.

Chinese-medium education emerged early in Singapore and became a strategic base of Communist communal activity. The party provided teachers and textbooks; the student unions recruited and trained party activists and laid the foundation for the island's radical politics (Busch, 1974: 29). Few Malay-medium schools were developed before the 1950s and secondary institutions arose only after PAP came to power. In addition, a select number of Singapore's residents attended English- medium schools whose diplomas often conferred substantial economic advantages. These institutions reflect the separate streams in Singapore's social and political life. They also help perpetuate the cultural and linguistic segregation of Singapore's population-what Busch calls the "compartmentalization of the 'plural society' " (Busch, 1974: 22).

Legitimacy and Ethnicity asks a few simple but basic questions: How can a population, divided by culture, history, and language be united in a single, stable society? When do diverse loyalties develop a single loyalty to authorities or a regime? How can a divided people be convinced that they share common interests and a common destiny? How can the state ensure the racial harmony essential to a unified society? These questions lay the foundation for a "model of legitimacy and social cohesion" (Busch, 1974: 16). The alternative model promises continued subjugation of the Malay minority, racial friction, and perhaps riots, national disintegration, and outside intervention. The task, Busch believes, is a normative one, raising questions of ethnic values, principles of governance, and socialization. But it is also political and practical: the ruling elite, no less than Busch, believe "that racial harmony is essential to the survival of the country" (Busch, 1974: 33).

The author traveled to Singapore in 1969, a year distinguished by serious racial disturbances in neighboring Malaysia. His research received the full support of governmental authorities, particularly the Education Ministry. With their cooperation and that of the schools, he interviewed 3,316 secondary school students and conducted a small number of intensive interviews. These respondents, Busch believes, form a pivotal group in a developing nation. The school remains a central vehicle, along with the party, for arousing national aspirations and forging a national allegiance.




The data analysis in Legitimacy and Ethnicity is organized around two issues: what are the roots of legitimacy and what are the determinants of racial harmony? In neither case are these issues viewed in broad historical or developmental terms. Hibbs's concern with political institutions, stages of development, social mobilization, and social welfare receives little attention in Legitimacy and Ethnicity. Busch is concerned with the present period-indeed, a formative period for nation-building in Singa- pore-and with the social circumstances and consciousness of a diverse population. With this focus the book examines issues first raised by Sears and McConahay. The Busch survey taps feelings of ethnic pride and conflict, attitudes toward economic life, and prospects for advancement; it also considers language proficiency and a range of situational factors (school type, neighborhood composition, friendship groups). The author is concerned with social learning in school, peer groups, and neighborhoods. He asks how allegiant attitudes-support for the regime and interracial harmony-can be created in those settings. The model of legitimacy is broadly theoretical with implications for national instability and mass political violence; the focus and method are social psychological; the immediate consequences are practical and manipulative.

Legitimacy, or allegiance, depends on a complex set of beliefs: group economic satisfaction and pride but combined with a commitment to social justice, a belief that all groups are entitled to similar advantages. Busch's regression analysis, run separately on the Malay and Chinese respondents, reveals a pattern largely consistent with this model. The Chinese prove more allegiant when satisfied with their economic position; their support is not predicated on the economic disadvantage of other island groups (Busch, 1974: 51). Ability in Mandarin and respect for Chinese culture also contribute to expressions of allegiance. The Chinese community, however, should not raise serious problems in allegiance. After all, the congruence of ethnicity and allegiance in the Chinese case is also a congruence of ethnicity and political control. The poverty and political impotence of the Malay community raises more difficult issues. Economic satisfaction is not related to allegiance for the Malays; nor does ethnic pride or respect for Chinese culture enhance their commitment to the nation. Malay education further exacerbates this disaffection (Busch, 1974: 52-53). Only with regard to "shared justice" do beliefs in the Malay community bring respondents closer to the norms of the larger political community. Busch writes, "Here is evidence that the PAP has, to some degree at least, succeeded in the attempt to found a new legitimacy on the basis of multi-racialism" (Busch, 1974: 52).



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The survey results in Legitimacy and Ethnicity point out tensions present in Singapore. The Chinese, steeped in their cultural heritage and Mandarin education, express marked feelings of racial or ethnic superi- ority. The Malays are more self-deprecating (Busch, 1974: 68). In the Chinese case, these sentiments reflect the belief that the Chinese family and race continue to progress while the Malays lag behind (Busch, 1974: 69). The Malays' thinking on these issues is more complex, but the results suggest that sensed inferiority is a product of differential group advancement (Busch, 1974: 69-71). Friendship patterns and housing integration produce conflicting results. The Chinese who live in ethnically mixed neighborhoods or have non-Chinese friendships are better disposed toward the Malays. On the other hand, Malays in mixed residential areas are more hostile toward integration, though non-Malay friendships do produce more favorable attitudes.

Legitimacy and Ethnicity makes no attempt to relate these questions to incidences of or propensities toward violence. But to both the author and Singapore's ruling elite, the question of legitimacy and supportive norms is inseparable from the question of social instability and violence. Normative support is a critical issue in any society. Where the population is divided into groups whose history, culture, and language are distinctive and whose politics are compartmentalized and possibly hostile, normative integration emerges as an overriding problem. Allegiance and intergroup harmony are, therefore, the central normative problems of Singapore. They are, in this view, also a primary issue in all societies whose diversity would pull them apart. They must, as Singapore has, evolve a national ideology based on allegiance, shared justice, and diminished intergroup hostility.

The difficulty, however, lies with a significant number of multiethnic societies that have experienced modernization without such beliefs (South Africa and Northern Ireland, for example). Where "compartmentalized" groups each control substantial resources, attempts must be made to harmonize their conflicting interests and goals. Normative integration would certainly facilitate that process. It is not clear, however, where a distinctive cultural group has few adherents (e.g., the Malays in Singapore) and few economic and (domestic) political resources, that the society must take its interests into account. Continued subjugation may help limit demand for consumer goods, control organization among industrial workers, and allow greater economic gains for dominant groups. Feelings of self-denigration among the cultural minority may discourage active organization against the regime. These relationships are not inevitable in diverse societies, but their logic is no less compelling than that of




normative integration. Nor is it obvious which approach is more likely to preclude the use of mass violence.

Legitimacy and allegiance are important values in creating a unitary nation-state. But societies are not organized solely as nations. They are also structured by class relations and, in some cases, by patterns of racial domination. These relationships also require supportive norms. Indeed, the values underlying a system of racial stratification are difficult to square with notions of national integration. One set of values is based on exclusion and domination while the other assumes an elementary sense of equity and formal incorporation. These distinctions are essential in order to focus on norms and values and their special place in socially differentiated societies.

Singapore, however, has remained peaceful in recent years. Its leaders articulate a program of national integration based on legitimacy and racial harmony; their program emphasizes interethnic mixing and cooperation and economic advancement for the Malay minority. These developments might seem anomalous if it were not for the overwhelming presence of Malay majorities in neighboring countries. Busch recognizes the influence of such groups on Singapore's political consciousness. He speculates, for example, that the Malay minority may develop feelings of deprivation and political importance when comparing their position to Malays in neighboring countries (Busch, 1974: 88-89). Similarly, the ruling PAP must also remain sensitive to the external Malay presence. The policy of national integration may be based on a genuine regard for multiracialism and equity; it is plausible, however, that the PAP considers any other policy suicidal in the Malay Peninsula. Its policy attempts to maximize allegiance within the population, but also to minimize conflict with Malaysia and possibly Indonesia.

Such calculations are necessitated by the peculiar ethnic composition of Singapore and the nations surrounding it. But what seems peculiar in these relationships emerges with uncanny regularity in socially differentiated societies. International relations, we shall see, play a special role in the affairs of diverse societies.

BELFAST: APPROACH TO CRISIS

The violence of Belfast, Londonderry, and Newry are a historical and recurrent social issue. The most recent turmoil began in 1963. A small



[1761 JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

number of Catholics, dissatisfied with their housing accommodations, demonstrated against the Protestant-dominated council. Later their movement gained organizational form as the Campaign for Social Justice, and by 1967 it had spawned the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. The larger marches began in 1968 in Londonderry. The Minister of Home Affairs first banned the march. When this failed to have its desired effect, the police "clubbed" the participants. A public outcry in Ulster, the Republic, and England brought a government commitment to explore Catholic grievances, the suspension of the local authority, and, perhaps, as a sign of what was to come later, counter-demonstrations by Protestant Ultras. Again the government committed itself to a reform program-but reforms that failed to meet the demand of "one man, one vote, one value." In early 1969 Catholic demonstrators marched from Belfast to Londonderry. They were attacked both in and outside Londonderry by Protestant Ultras, apparently with the full cooperation of the Protestant- dominated police (Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster B Special Constabulary). Subsequently, the Unionist (Protestant and moderate) Prime Minister, failing to gain an electoral mandate, resigned. Events soon took a more communal and violent form. Fearing combined Protestant and police assaults on the Bogside, Catholic residents erected the barricades that were soon to characterize Northern Ireland. Barricades quickly followed in Belfast, as did attacks on the Catholic communities at Falls and Shankill Roads by the RUC and Protestant crowds. Westminister felt compelled to order 6,000 British army troops into Northern Ireland; civil rights organizations were displaced by citizens' defense groups. But neither additional reforms nor the troops could halt the emerging agenda. Fifteen people died in the sectarian violence of 1969 (Rose, 1971: 101-112).

Fortunately for social science, if not for the citizens of Northern Ireland, two surveys were conducted in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the worst violence. Richard Rose, supported by grants from the American and British Social Science Research Councils, carried out a large-scale survey in 1969. Two years earlier Ian Budge and Cornelius O'Leary had conducted "the first political survey ever to be undertaken in Northern Ireland" (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: xi). Neither survey was preoccupied with the issue of violence or the logic and frustrations that predispose people to violence. Rose was concerned with legitimacy, and the survey was meant to follow up an earlier project on England. Budge and O'Leary were examining electoral and party development in one city. Subsequent events obviously forced the authors to




redirect their efforts, to address the violent sectarian war that divides Ulster. The results are somewhat strained: neither interview schedule is comfortably adapted to the new agenda. But the books could no more have ignored the violence than a study of American race relations could ignore the civil rights movement or the urban riots. The results, even if strained, provide a unique insight into a population in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of internal war. This essay will focus on the most recent of those efforts, Budge and O'Leary's Belfast: Approach to Crisis.

The authors examined Belfast from three sides: first, as a historical problem, second, as a survey problem, and finally, as a comparative problem. The first half of the book describes the formation of key religious and political groups and the evolution of the constitutional question. The historical section, we shall see, is the strongest product of their joint effort. The survey was conducted among the general Belfast population, municipal councilors, and correspondents for local news- papers. The sample size, particularly for the general population, is desperately inadequate-only 229 Belfast residents. The 45 municipal councilors constitute a far more representative sample (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 380). The comparison of Belfast and Glasgow is appropriate and suggestive. Both cities evolved as industrial centers in the nineteenth century, were dependent primarily on textiles and heavy engineering, and now face a declining industrial base and high unemploy- ment. The Catholic minorities are comparable in both cities (about one Catholic to three non-Catholics), and in both cases the Presbyterians are the most prominent Protestant denomination (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: xiv). Yet Belfast is now a city divided by religious and national loyalties. In Glasgow the Labor Party dominates the city's governance, with sectarian issues playing only a secondary role. Unfortunately, this intriguing comparison only marginally influences the analysis.

The major historical introduction to Belfast makes us appreciate how much of Northern Ireland's history is written outside its borders. We cannot recount that history here, but we can highlight a number of domestic developments in England and Ireland that created the conditions for social differentiation and violence in Ulster.

Northern Ireland never was a self-contained society in which distinct and hostile religious groups arose naturally. Protestantism came to Northern Ireland through Henry VIII's efforts (largely futile) to convert the Irish people and later through promoted emigration and land development schemes (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 1-2). In the initial stages




150,000 Scots and 20,000 English migrated to Ulster (Rose, 1971: 78). Cromwell's military campaign in Ireland was followed by extensive land confiscation and the virtual elimination of a Catholic, landed class in Ulster (Rose, 1971: 79). James II provided only a brief interlude. The Glorious Revolution guaranteed Protestant domination in Ireland and Belfast. Budge and O'Leary note, "The laws for the suppression of popery, passed by the Irish Parliament from 1703, excluded Catholics from Parliament itself, from corporate offices, and finally (1727), deprived Catholics and freeholders of the parliamentary franchise" (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 6). Groups soon emerged that reflected the diverse sentiments and emotions of Ireland. They brought violence to Northern Ireland in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, as they do now. The Society of United Irishmen demanded Catholic emancipation and the union of all Ireland. The Orange Order emerged from the sectarian riots in 1796-committed to Protestantism and later to the English connection (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 10-11).

Northern Ireland illustrates the extent to which developments in socially differentiated societies are drawn from surrounding and more powerful "histories." There is no logic within a particular society that creates basic linguistic, religious, cultural, or national cleavages. Almost invariably they draw their sentiment and symbolism from conflicts that transcend the particular society. An industrial order, on the other hand, may have its own logic: workers and the bourgeoisie have distinct sets of interests, needs, and goals; they interact on the basis of relationships that are indigenous to the society. The logic is self-contained. It is possible to talk about capitalist or economic development and predictable kinds of consequences, including violence. Any examination of social differentiation and violence that failed to consider a larger context would hardly encompass the appropriate variables and actors.

The survey material covers very different questions. What are the various party "images"? What are the religious and class bases of the parties? What theories of representation are current among the parties? How representative are the parties and councilors of community opinion? Religion is a much more important determinant of party support in Belfast than in Glasgow. Indeed, religion has six times the effect of class in Belfast; in Glasgow, class is the more important factor (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 207, 224). The Nationalist supporters in Belfast are Catholic to a man and woman, and 82% are church attendees. Unionist support is drawn almost exclusively from the various Protestant sects (24%o from the Church of Ireland, 50% from the Presbyterians, and 17% from



REVIEW SECTION [1791

other Protestant sects; Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 244). The authors also conduct a fascinating test of religion and class in interpersonal relations. Surprisingly, both Catholics and Presbyterians in the general sample view class as more salient than religion. Councilors offer a different pattern: Presbyterian councilors opt for religion (by six to one), while Catholic councilors persist with class (three to one; Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 252-253).

While the survey results are interesting and suggestive, there are two basic problems with the material. First, the small sample size raises questions of reliability and significance. A sample of 229 respondents dispersed over five religious groups and four parties makes for table cells of singular insignificance. Second, the issues addressed in the survey only marginally face the historical questions raised by the authors or the current breakdown of authority. The problem derives in large part from the violence that intervened between the project's inception and the book's publication. That perhaps explains, but does not eliminate, the disjunction. The fact that Unionist councilors share a higher social status than their followers, and that there exists a dearth of communication within the Unionist councilor ranks, hardly seems basic to the conflicts that wrack Northern Ireland.

This disjunction is illustrated by Budge and O'Leary's assessment of recent turmoil in Northern Ireland. The historical sweep of the earlier section is lost to the analysis of party-systerm development and the efficacy of party leadership. Unfortunately, the crisis is seen almost exclusively in these terms. Protestant leaders in 1966, they write, had "relatively free choice" (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 376). Public opinion was fluid: "there are no grounds for attributing intransigence and political instability in Belfast to any very consistent minority opposition to the established institutions of city government" (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 362). In addition, the Unionists had unquestioned control of the political institutions. But the leadership squandered its position and options. The leadership was elitist and out of touch with Protestant opinion; its decision-making was chaotic and wracked by "cross pressures"; it opted for rhetoric that "stimulate [dl feelings of relative deprivation" and encouraged "renewed minority action against the regime" (Budge and O'Leary, 1973: 377). The roots of the crisis, consequently, are found in a lost opportunity and the chaos in Unionist ranks.

There is little question that Unionist leaders did not deal effectively with the growing Catholic opposition. It is probably true that moderate but inadequate reforms inflamed both the IRA and the Protestant Ultras. But the outbreak of internal war cannot be left exclusively to the bungling




of inept politicians. Party leaders are not free to make concessions at will, without regard for history, their own constituencies, their own prejudices, or the constraints of party structure. They act, even ineptly, within a history of sectarian violence well documented by Budge and O'Leary.

CONCLUSION

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF INTRANATIONAL VIOLENCE

The four works examined in this essay describe vastly disparate settings, problems, and political systems; they employ equally disparate approaches and methodologies. Their points of disagreement are obvious enough. Some are superficial, reflecting different styles of research or different approaches to shared theoretical concerns; others are fundamental, reflecting irreconcilable theoretical positions or distinctly opposed inter- pretations of violent events. Many of these conflicts have been emphasized in the preceding sections. What is not emphasized is the complementary findings that advance our understanding of social differentiation and political violence.

The persistent tension between social stability on the one hand and racial, linguistic, or ethnic cleavages on the other is an explicit theme in each of these works. In some cases the outbreak of sectarian or racial disorders provided the research project's rationale and laboratory. But the shared concern with disorder should not lead to the conclusion that social differentiation has a necessary relationship with political violence. Hibbs's analysis makes clear that collective protest and internal war are mediated by group discrimination and political separatism; where socially diverse societies are free from such influences, diversity and disorder have no necessary connection. The Singapore case is also illustrative. The official ideology stresses ethnic consciousness while discouraging economic differentiation and "social apartheid." The leaders operate on the principle, perhaps confirmed by Hibbs, that differentiation without grievances will not disrupt programs for national integration and development.

Under what conditions do societies encourage discrimination or separatism? When does social differentiation become volatile? These questions stand out as the principal unresolved issues in this area of inquiry. It is possible, however, to list a few hypotheses consistent with the data presented.




(1) Where the culture, interests, and language of one ethnic group are translated as national values, the national interest, and the national language, there exists a prima facie case for violence. The conflict is national in scope and likely to be manifest as internal war. This pattern is consistent with Protestant domination in Northern Ireland, the PAP attempt to separate itself from Chinese interests, and Ilibbs's results on political separatism.

(2) Where political authorities espouse norms encouraging full incroporation, but in the past permitted discrimination, subjugated groups may engage in collective protest. This pattern is consistent with results in the United States, Northern Ireland (when Westminster, rather than Stormont, is seen as the dominant authority) and Hibbs's results for group discrimination.

Hibbs's multiequation formulation includes a causal chain encompassing some of these concepts: group discrimination leads to repressive government action, followed by the outbreak of internal war (Hibbs, 1973: 182-183). The Northern Ireland case (since 1963) illustrates this process. Political and economic discrimination against Catholics fostered incipient protests including marches and demonstrations (collective protest). These actions were followed by selective and probably inadequate reforms, but more importantly, by brutal police activity, counter-sectarian violence, and limitations on civil liberties (negative sanctions). The movement became more separatist in tone, emphasizing solidarity with the Republic and deemphasizing the rights of British subjects. The struggle soon degenerated into the bloody sectarian conflict (internal war) that continues to plague Northern Ireland. In the United States, the causal linkage was broken at an important stage. City authorities countered the riots of the 1960s with a variety of repressive actions-some immediate and violent, others more long term (the training and arming of domestic police forces). But the response also involved important elements of reform. Some of them were undoubtedly symbolic (the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, for example). But regardless of their significance, large numbers of ghetto residents believed the riots produced major changes and improved relations between white and black Americans (Sears and McConahay, 1973: 161-162). The violence of Watts, Harlem, Detroit, and other cities, consistent with patterns in the Hibbs model, did not degenerate into internal war.

Hibbs's discovery that collective protest is related in curvilinear fashion with indicators of economic development seems to contradict the Sears and McConahay portrayal of the New Urban Black. He appears to argue that inadequate integration into industrial and urban life, associated with early industrial development, is conducive to violence. Sears and McCona- hay, on the other hand, believe that socialization to urban norms is a




precondition for violence. It was the former rather than the latter perspective that prompted the analyses of the McCone Commission and social scientists like Edward Banfield (Banfield, 1970). The conflict, however, is more imagined than real. The Hibbs finding on violence and economic development only demonstrates an association between level of development and the incidence of violence. The finding itself does not enable one to distinguish which groups are inclined to violence. Recent urban migrants are likely candidates, but so too are settled workers who must cope with both the promise of urban life and the influx of new, undersocialized, and underpaid workers. The problem is particularly acute where new urban workers are culturally or racially distinct from the settled population. This pattern cannot explain the violence of Watts, but is certainly consistent with the "communal riots" in St. Louis during World War I and those in Chicago and Detroit during World War II. Industrialization is a difficult process not only for the uprooted, normless workers but also for those who are already fully proletarianized.

Structural imbalances at the aggregate level, Hibbs writes, have little influence on the incidence of violence; indeed collinearity between independent variables (e.g. education and economic development) mini- mizes the problem's extent and the theory's significance. But congruence of variables at the aggregate level does not preclude structural imbalance for specific groups. Both the Politics of Violence and Legitimacy and Ethnicity find that ethnic or racial minorities apply "comparison levels" and develop feelings of relative deprivation. In Watts, feelings of deprivation (based on comparison levels) were highly correlated with riot participation. In Singapore, unfavorable comparisons with dominant groups has both a direct and indirect impact on allegiance and adherence to regime norms; in addition, the Malay presence in neighboring countries invites further comparisons that heighten deprivation (Busch, 1974: 87-89).

These results hold dramatic consequences for mixed societies. Inter- group conflicts and comparisons are not incidental to social differentiation but the essence of it. Relative deprivation, and perhaps other imbalance theories, are therefore principal concerns in the study of violence and diverse societies.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

A number of methodological concerns are described in each review section. These can be outlined in three principal problem areas.




Cross-national, aggregate data analysis is indispensable to the examination of mass political violence. Each substantive contribution (listed above) was considered in light of Hibbs's multiequation formulation. But socially differentiated societies present conceptual and evidential problems that limit the applicability of such findings. First, the ingredients of differentiation-race, culture, nationality, ethnicity, and language-distinguish not only groups within societies but also nations. As a result, conflict within socially differentiated societies frequently evolves from external developments. Political activity among Catholic groups in Northern Ireland is influenced by developments in the Republic of Ireland and even developments in Boston. The political consciousness of Singapore's Malay minority is affected by national aspirations in neighboring Malaysia. Indeed, the political assertiveness of American blacks is not independent of emerging national aspirations in Africa.

Second, developments at the systemic level that fail to produce violence may, when operative among subgroups, yield wholly different results. This is not simply an ecological fallacy. In part, structural imbalances within subgroups are concealed by the sheer enormity of nations and the relative obscurity of subgroups. But, the disjunction between developments at the societal and group levels is also an integral part of racial and ethnic stratifications themselves. Socially differentiated societies frequently, if not universally, contain "pockets of poverty," or "backward" groups- groups that "lag" behind developments in the society at large. They are less well-educated, less urbanized, less proletarian, or less middle class. While the society, on a variety of objective indicators, may appear developed and while particular subgroups may be fully integrated (normatively and economically), other subgroups appear "backward" and malintegrated. It is the contrast of these experiences (between fully urbanized and newly urbanized groups, for example) that produces feelings of deprivation and acts of violence.

The role of external affairs in intranational violence underscores the need for history in the study of socially differentiated societies. Perhaps each of us has a vested interest in the unique unfolding of our specialized areas. But these mixed societies are indeed special cases. Singapore was forged during colonial occupation from a mixture of cultures, none of which were indigenous to the island itself. The conflict within Northern Ireland cannot be understood without an appreciation for the English Reformation and the Glorious Revolution. Nor is the violence of American race relations fully explicable when abstracted from slave institutions and racial turmoil in the South. The logic of these conflicts does not evolve




simply from indigenous or immediate political developments; it draws instead on historical and external factors that transcend particular national settings.

Survey research provides valuable insights into Watts, Singapore, and Ulster. In each case, survey analysis pinpoints groups that prove receptive to violence and outlines the beliefs that distinguish the "orderly" from the "disorderly." The Politics of Violence makes an especially valuable contribution in this area; it describes the background, motivations, and hopes of riot participants. What public opinion research has not evolved, however, is adequate standards for predicting the consequences of certain beliefs. It is one thing to say that riot participants feel more deprived than nonrioters; it is quite another matter to say certain levels of deprivation in a community will be manifest as violent political behavior. The Budge and O'Leary survey (and Rose's as well) was conducted immediately before the outbreak of violence. Yet it is not apparent, except in hindsight, that their findings mandate the bloody sectarian clashes. In fact, the authors find little taste among the sample population for sectarian conflict, though undoubtedly many of their respondents joined the protest demonstrations or the subsequent civil disorders. The use of survey research, therefore, must be tempered: first, by standards and concepts for assessing the salience, flexibility, and practicality of certain beliefs, and second, by an appreciation for situational factors that generate opinion change or facilitate the translation of beliefs into violence.

REFERENCES

BANFIELD, E. (1970) The Unheavenly City. Boston: Little Brown. GURR, T. R. (1966) New Error-Compensated Measures For Comparing Nations.

Princeton: Princeton University Center of International Studies. Report of the Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) New York: Bantam

Books. ROSE, R. (1971) Governing Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective. London:

Faber & Faber. TAEUBER, K. and A. F. TAEUBER (1969) Negroes in Cities. New York: Atheneum.



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Social Differentiation and Political Violence