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Evolutionary psychological foundations of civil wars

Kanazawa, Satoshi ORCID: 0000-0003-3786-8797 (2009) Evolutionary psychological foundations of civil wars. Journal of Politics, 71 (01). pp. 25-34. ISSN 0022-3816

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Identification Number: 10.1017/S0022381608090026

Abstract

I propose an evolutionary psychological perspective on wars and suggest that the ultimate cause of intergroup conflict may be the relative availability of reproductive women. Polygyny, which allows some men to monopolize all reproductive opportunities and exclude others, may increase the prevalence of civil wars, but not interstate wars, which did not exist in the ancestral environment. The analysis of the Correlates of War data support both hypotheses; polygyny increases civil wars but not interstate wars. Polygyny explains a greater proportion of the variance in civil war experience than democracy does in interstate war experience. If the democratic peace is the first law of international relations (interstate wars), then polygyny may be the first law of intergroup conflict (civil wars).

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jop/current
Additional Information: © 2009 CUP
Divisions: Management
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
J Political Science > JZ International relations
Date Deposited: 06 Apr 2011 13:08
Last Modified: 05 Jan 2024 05:24
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/30314

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