Theories and Types of State Violence: Understanding Greed, Grievances, and Identity Conflicts

States are usually thought of as protectors. They guarantee order, deliver justice, and hold a legitimate monopoly over the use of force. Yet the same institutions that promise security can also become sources of fear. When governments turn their coercive power against their own people through repression, torture, military crackdowns, or sponsored terror, we move into the difficult territory of state violence. Understanding why this happens means looking beyond individual leaders and asking what structural forces push states and societies toward organised violence. Three frameworks dominate this discussion: greed, grievances, and identity.

What state violence means 🔗

State violence refers to the use or threat of force by a government and its agents against civilians to maintain control, suppress dissent, or pursue political objectives. One widely cited definition describes it as state agents using threats or acts of violence against civilians, marked by indifference to human life, to prevent any challenge to the status quo. It can be open, as in a military crackdown on protesters, or hidden, as in covert operations by secret police.

The forms it takes are varied. Scholars point to military actions against internal revolts, political assassinations, state-sponsored terrorism, and judicial penalties as legal or extralegal tools that governments use to maintain control and achieve their goals. The contemporary picture is complicated further by what the analyst Peter Chalk called the “Grey Area Phenomena,” in which non-state actors and processes threaten state stability in ways that limit the relevance of standard military conceptions of power. To explain why violence erupts and persists, theorists turn to deeper motives.

Greed and grievance: the central debate 🔗

The “greed versus grievance” debate is one of the most influential frameworks for understanding why armed conflict and political violence break out. Although the phrase was developed mainly to explain civil wars, it has been extended to violent conflict more broadly. The old intuition is captured by Aristotle’s line that poverty is the parent of revolution and crime, but modern theorists have refined this into two competing explanations.

The greed theory 🔗

The greed argument holds that armed conflict is driven by the desire for self-enrichment. Combatants and elites fight to gain economic resources or to increase their power within a state. Following the work of economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, civil wars are seen as essentially market-driven, originating from competition among elites over natural resources. Crucially, this theory predicts that conflict is more likely in states with negative economic growth, low per capita income, and high unemployment, because in poor economies the opportunity cost of joining a rebellion is low.

Resources matter here in a very concrete way. The existence of valuable natural resources can attract “greedy outsiders,” where states and corporations have an incentive to foster or engage in civil conflict to capture them. Lootable commodities, smuggling networks, and contested oil or mineral wealth turn violence into a viable, even rational, strategy for those who can profit from it.

The grievance theory 🔗

The grievance argument shifts the focus from profit to injustice. It draws on a long-standing position in political science that relative deprivation, an idea associated with Ted Gurr, and the resentment it produces, fuels internal violence. Here, people rebel not because rebellion pays, but because they feel wronged, excluded, or oppressed. Political exclusion, repression, cultural discrimination, and the denial of basic rights are the engines of conflict.

This framework places identity and group formation at its core. An individual’s sense of worth is tied to the standing of the group they belong to, and perceived injustice against that group becomes a powerful mobiliser. The policy implication is significant. Theorists who emphasise grievances suggest that sustainable peace requires direct engagement with the state, and that the real task is to analyse the denial of human rights as the root cause of grievance rather than treating symptoms alone.

How greed and grievances feed each other 🔗

In practice, the two explanations are rarely separate. The scholar David Keen argued that greed and grievance interact, so that greed generates grievances and rebellion, which in turn legitimises further greed. Empirical research suggests the two may be complementary: grievances and group inequalities are often better at explaining why conflicts begin, while greed-based dynamics help explain why conflicts persist and endure. A grievance can be the spark; the contest over resources is often what keeps the fire burning.

Globalisation and the erosion of state authority 🔗

Why have these theories become so prominent recently? Globalisation theorists argue that economic integration reshapes the conditions for violence in two ways. First, it brings changes to the state, particularly the erosion of state authority and public goods, which can make societies vulnerable to conflict. Second, it creates new opportunities through transborder trade, both legal and illegal. A weakened state struggles to provide services and security, while open borders make it easier to move weapons, contraband, and fighters.

Southeast Asia illustrates this dynamic. Long-running conflicts in the region have been tied to competition over land, resources, and political power. In Aceh in Indonesia, for example, economic inequality, the lack of avenues for political participation, and repression weakened society and were given a cultural spin that helped construct a distinct Acehnese identity used to mobilise the population. Resource wealth, weak governance, and group identity combined to sustain decades of violence.

Identity-based conflicts: ethnicity and religion 🔗

The third major framework treats identity itself as a driver of state violence. In diverse societies, ethnic, religious, and racial divisions can become fault lines along which violence is organised. This is not because difference automatically breeds conflict, but because identity solves a practical problem for those who mobilise people for collective action.

Horizontal inequalities 🔗

The most important concept here is horizontal inequality, meaning inequality between culturally defined groups rather than between individuals. Research by the Oxford-based CRISE programme concluded that the presence of large horizontal inequalities among salient identity groups increases the risk of violent conflict. These inequalities may be economic, such as unequal access to assets and jobs, but also social, political, or about cultural status. When a religious or ethnic group sees itself systematically disadvantaged in income, education, or political representation, grievance acquires a collective, mobilising form.

The comparative evidence is instructive. Studies across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and West Africa found that within each region, countries that managed inequalities between groups, such as Malaysia and Ghana, avoided serious national conflict, while their neighbours experienced severe violence. The lesson is that how a state manages group differences matters as much as the differences themselves.

Majoritarian politics and identity 🔗

Identity conflict is also shaped by the political use of majority and minority status. Conservative majoritarian movements across Asia, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu alike, have often been driven by a fear that the majority’s privileged position was under threat from minorities. These movements have proven particularly lethal when backed by governments in power. Competitive domestic politics can deliberately inflame ethnic and religious tensions, undermining the norms of pluralism that keep diverse societies stable.

State violence enters here directly. When religious minorities protest discrimination, governments have at times responded with force. The suppression of Buddhist protests in 1960s South Vietnam, carried out through both police and military, is a stark historical example of identity-based grievance meeting state coercion. For India, a society with deep ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, these debates about how the state manages group inequality and protects minorities are far from abstract.

Types of state violence in practice 🔗

These theories help explain the recurring forms state violence takes. Military dictatorship involves the armed forces seizing or controlling the state and using violence to suppress dissent, often with widespread human rights abuses, as the institutionalisation of torture under Brazil’s military regime demonstrated. State terrorism describes violence by governments against perceived threats, while state-sponsored terrorism refers to a government supporting terrorist actions in other states, a charge that has featured prominently in South Asian security debates.

Addressing the roots, not just the symptoms 🔗

If grievances and inequalities are central to violence, then prevention must go beyond force. Theorists emphasising grievances argue that lasting peace depends on addressing the denial of human needs and rights at the heart of conflict. This points toward good governance, transparent and accountable institutions, the protection of minority rights, and the reduction of horizontal inequalities between groups. A state that closes the gap between communities and offers genuine political participation removes much of the fuel that greed-driven actors and identity entrepreneurs rely upon.

What do you think? If greed and grievance usually work together, which should governments prioritise when designing policies to prevent state violence? And in a diverse society, how can a state reduce horizontal inequalities between groups without itself becoming an instrument of repression?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism
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4. https://blogs.gwu.edu/ccas-panamericanos/peace-studies-wiki/peace-studies-wiki/drivers-of-conflict/greed-and-grievance/
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6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23992689_Revisiting_the_Greed_and_Grievance_Explanations_for_Violent_Internal_Conflict
7. https://repub.eur.nl/pub/21700/_mansoob_zulfan_GG__3_.pdf
8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5169678_Reappraising_the_Greed_and_Grievance_Explanations_for_Violent_Internal_Conflict
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10. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08b71ed915d622c000cab/CRISE_InBrief1.pdf
11. https://stateofconflictinasia.org/keynotes/identity-conflicts-in-southeast-asia-an-overview/
12. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/postcolonial-religious-conflict-in-southeast-asia/
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_abuses_of_the_military_dictatorship_in_Brazil_(1964%E2%80%931985)