Why Men Rebel By Ted Gurr

Fourth main causes of civil war is, relative deprivation and discontent. Ted Gurr the writer of “Why men rebel" defines relative deprivation as “a perceived discrepancy between men’s value expectations and their value capabilities”. The theory claims that the coincidence of “deprivation-Induced discontent and sense of identities such as cultural identities is the main factor of political mobilization”. The theory of Gur is similar to the theory of Stewart that expresses when there are political, social and economic inequalities combine with cultural difference it could become a powerful mobilizing agent that lead to political violence (Longer). When the legitimate desires and expectation, are blocked or are limited by society or government
the feeling of relative deprivation arise. Relative deprivation can be the central changeable in the social movements and social movement come from collective feeling when there are relative deprivation or people think there are relative derivative (Flynn). When people feel that their freedom, desires and choices are limited by society and government or law the people with similar desires and expectation find each other and lead a social movements to bring changes and to pave the way for greater choice.
Relative deprivation theory can contain socio-political, economic and organizational problems and contain egoistic deprivation and fraternal deprivation forms.
According to Singer, “Egoistic deprivation refers to a single individual’s feeling of comparative deprivation” and “fraternal deprivation, also called group deprivation, refers to the discontent arising from the status of the entire group as compared to a referent group”( Flynn). These movements forms from every individual feeling of relative deprivations and then they make the group with a greater strategy to gain individual and collective desires and expectations. The reason that why sometimes the relative deprivations causes a movement and sometimes even violence is that most of the society even though are not satisfy with the condition of their lives but still they do not learn to fight for them. And even sometime people do not know that it is their right to fight or they should find a solutions. They are satisfy with the difficult way of living and thinks that it is life like they are living. Like in Afghanistan, most of the provinces have no access to an accurate and healthy life and the security is not good, most of the days they lose their family members in bomb attack or fighting by Taliban but they do not ask government to do something for
them.

In addition, by recap of the causes identified by previous scholars for civil wars, this paper bring up a new integrated perspective that horizontal inequalities and contain 3 out of 4 causes of civil wars that mentioned in this paper. For example poverty, ethnic diversity and geographical division are some of the causes of civil war but somehow we can relate them to one of the dimensions of horizontal inequality. Poverty causes civil war and the reason of poverty is horizontal inequality and gap among people. When the resources, do not distribute among people equally so it leads some of society toward insecurity, poverty and civil war. As well, when in a country there are many ethnics and some of the ethnic have more part in power but minority have not access to political it causes civil war and it happened when there are ethnic diversities and one of the dimension of horizontal inequalities together it causes civil war. There are many countries with ethnic diversities but they do not have experienced civil war. So unbalanced power or unbalanced distribution of resources among ethnics causes civil war in a country. Unbalanced or unequal distribution of resource, power and other things in different regions also bring war in a country. So we can bring the other reasons of civil war under the horizontal inequalities (Case Study). Conclusion: Most of the countries experienced civil war and it is somehow inevitable as there are many factors for that within a country.
The main causes of civil war are poverty, ethnic division, Horizontal inequalities and relative derivative within a country. When there is poverty in a country there is higher risk of civil war than other countries. In some points civil war and poverty make stronger each other and have direct relation. When poverty rises civil war rises and when civil war rises poverty rises. Ethnic diversities also increase civil wars. It usually happen because of identity. As identity as one of the most important thing for people they fight for it to keep it stronger or secured. As mentioned, there are different kind of horizontal inequalities such as social horizontal inequality, political horizontal inequalities, economical horizontal inequalities, and cultural horizontal inequalities. Relative derivative also bring civil war in a country. When the people feel that their desire, choices and expectations are limited or blocked by society or government they start fighting to make a greater land for their desires and choices. Understanding the causes of civil wars help us to stop the civil war or decrease that. By looking to the causes of civil war that are mentioned in this paper, 3 out of 4 causes can come under the horizontal inequalities. Such as, poverty, ethnic diversities and geographical division which lead the society to civil war are the reason of
horizontal inequalities. When resources, power and other things do not distribute equally among people it causes poverty and then poverty causes civil war. When power and resources do not distribute equally among different ethnics or regions it brings civil war. So horizontal inequalities are a greater and abroad causes for civil war. In order to decrease civil war people should decrease horizontal inequalities among nations, states, ethnic and other groups.