ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some results of a successful attempt to assess and refine a causal model of the general conditions of several forms of civil strife, using cross-sectional analyses of data collected for 114 polities. The universe of analysis chosen for evaluating the model comprised 114 distinct national and colonial political entities, each of which had a population of one million or more in 1962. Great importance is attributed in psychological theory and equally, in theoretical and empirical studies of revolutionary behavior, to the inhibiting effects of punishment or coercion, actual or threatened, on the outcome of deprivation. The basic theoretical proposition is that a psychological variable, relative deprivation, is the basic precondition for civil strife of any kind, and that the more widespread and intense deprivation is among members of a population, the greater is the magnitude of strife in one or another form.
