Why did the Rwandan genocide take place? How could parents feed their own children drinks laced with poison in Jonestown? As we see many parts of the world being engulfed in fratricidal frenzy, we wonder if it can happen in this country. Gupta examines contemporary cases of genocide and mass murder and seeks to explain why certain societies are more prone to these actions and others are relatively immune.

Gupta sees a dialectical tension between our two identities: the self and the collective. The end of the medieval period was marked by the emergence of individualism in Europe. With...

Why did the Rwandan genocide take place? How could parents feed their own children drinks laced with poison in Jonestown? As we see many parts of the world being engulfed in fratricidal frenzy, we wonder if it can happen in this country. Gupta examines contemporary cases of genocide and mass murder and seeks to explain why certain societies are more prone to these actions and others are relatively immune.

Gupta sees a dialectical tension between our two identities: the self and the collective. The end of the medieval period was marked by the emergence of individualism in...

In this pioneering volume, Dipak Gupta takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the causes of political violence and the effects of political instability. The first work to expand the scope of traditional economic growth models to include political instability, "The Economics of Political Violence" examines the motivations an individual might have for participating in an act of political violence. Establishing the conceptual linkages between micro-level, individual-based theory and aggregate structural theories of political violence and revolution, Gupta also constructs a...