Christopher K. Butler and Scott Gates
Communal Violence and Property Rights
WORKING PAPER
2010
Abstract
We examine the interactions of non-state actors (specifically pastoralists and farmers) when state
provided property-rights protection (PRP) is neither perfect nor absent. PRP is modeled as potentially
biased towards one interpretation of property rights over another interpretation. Using a contest success
function model, we demonstrate that the following non-monotonic result exists. If a society has a
moderate level of PRP but some degree of bias away from equity, increasing PRP can result in either a
decrease or an increase in total appropriative effort. Thus, simply increasing PRP without addressing
equity issues can increase the level of conflict in the society.
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